RAPID BEST-FIRST RETRIEVAL FROM MASSIVE DICTIONARIES

A new method of searching large dictionaries given uncertain inputs is described, based on the lazy evaluation of a syntactic neural network (SNN). The new method is shown to significantly outperform a conventi onal trie-based method for large dictionaries (e.g. in excess of 100,0 00 entries). Results are presented for the problem of recognising UK p ostcodes using dictionary sizes of up to 1 million entries. Most signi ficantly, it is demonstrated that the SNN actually gets faster as more data is loaded into it.