CORRECTING REAL-WORD SPELLING ERRORS USING A MODEL OF THE PROBLEM-SOLVING CONTEXT

This paper explores the application of a rich model of pragmatic context to the problem of identifying and correcting real-word spelling errors. Results suggest that such a model can be useful for generating and ranking a list of possible corrections according to their contextual relevance. In the domain of expert consultation discourse, a mode! of pragmatic context must represent not only the user's domain plans, but also the problem-solving processes that explore alternative plans, refining and instantiating the intended plan, and the connections between those problem-solving moves and their resulting discourse manifestations. In the model presented, metaplans are used to represent these problem-solving and discourse levels, while heuristics that take into account the user's problem-solving strategies and world knowledge serve to rank the relative likelihood of different possible next queries. An implementation of this model has been used to suggest pragmatically coherent interpretations that can be matched against a partial parse of the input in order to generate possible corrections for real-word spelling errors.