Combining topic specific language models

In this paper we investigate whether a combination of topic specific language models can outperform a general purpose language model, using a trigram model as our baseline model. We show that in the ideal case - in which it is known beforehand which model to use - specific models perform considerably better than the baseline model. We test two methods that combine specific models and show that these combinations outperform the general purpose model, in particular if the data is diverse in terms of topics and vocabulary. Inspired by these findings, we propose to combine a decision tree and a set of dynamic Bayesian networks into a new model. The new model uses context information to dynamically select an appropriate specific model. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.