=============================
MIT Language Modeling Toolkit
=============================

The MIT Language Modeling (MITLM) toolkit is a set of tools designed
for the efficient estimation of statistical n-gram language models
involving iterative parameter estimation.  It achieves much of its
efficiency through the use of a compact vector representation of
n-grams.  Details of the data structure and associated algorithms can
be found in the following paper.

  * Bo-June (Paul) Hsu and James Glass. Iterative Language Model
    Estimation: Efficient Data Structure & Algorithms.  In
    Proc. Interspeech, 2008.

Currently, MITLM supports the following features:

  * Smoothing: Modified Kneser-Ney, Kneser-Ney, maximum likelihood
  * Interpolation: Linear interpolation, count merging, generalized
    linear interpolation
  * Evaluation: Perplexity
  * File formats: ARPA, binary, gzip, bz2

MITLM is available for download under the MIT License. It has been
built and tested on 32-bit and 64-bit Intel CPUs running Debian Linux
7.0. It currently requires the following:

  * ANSI C++/Fortran compiler (GCC 4.7.1+)

For more information about MITLM, please visit:

  https://code.google.com/p/mitlm/

If you find any BUG and/or want to provide a patch, please file an
issue about it at:

  https://code.google.com/p/mitlm/issues/list

===============
Acknowledgments
===============

The design and implementation of this toolkit benefited significantly
from the SRI Language Modeling Toolkit by Andreas Stolcke.

The vector library is partially derived from the Flexible Library for
Efficient Numerical Solutions by Michael Lehn.

  Copyright (c) 2007, Michael Lehn

  All rights reserved.

  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
  are met:

  1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
     the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
     distribution.
  3) Neither the name of the FLENS development group nor the names of
     its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
     derived from this software without specific prior written
     permission.

  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
  "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
  LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
  COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
  INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
  BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
  LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
  CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
  LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN
  ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
  POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The project is supported in part by the T-Party Project, a joint
research program between MIT CSAIL and Quanta Computer Inc.

Bo-June (Paul) Hsu
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(C) 2008