Digital Signal Processing: Character-Based Language Model

Introduction

• A character-based language model build with the SRILM toolkit,
• Plus, a viterbi-based decoding process of the language model implemented in C++.
• Given ZhuYin-mixed sequences obtained from an imperfect acoustic models with phoneme loss, reconstruct and decode the correct sentence using a character-based language model, this language model can be construct with the SRILM toolkit or this C++ implementation.
• Goal:
  • Given ZhuYin-mixed sequences:
    • 讓 他 十分 ㄏ怕 / 只 ㄒ望 ㄗ己 明ㄋ 度 別 再 這ㄇ ㄎ命 了
  • Reconstruct correct sentence:
    • 讓 他 十分 害怕 / 只 希望 自己 明年 度 別 再 這麼 苦命 了

Environment

• < Ubuntu 6.4.0-17 >
  • Computer Architecture: x86_64
  • CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
• < SRILM 1.5.10 >
  • How to Install SRILM
• < g++ [gcc version 8.2.0 (GCC)] > (Tested)
• < g++ [gcc version 6.4.0 (GCC)] > (Tested)
• < g++ [gcc version 4.2.1 (GCC)] > (Tested)

File Description

.
├── src/
|   ├── Makefile -------------> g++ compiler make file
|   ├── corpus.txt -----------> Training corpus in big5 encoding
|   ├── Big5-ZhuYin.map ------> character to Zhu-Yin mapping in big5 encoding
|   ├── mapping.py -----------> Creates Zhu-Yin to char mapping from its inverse mapping
|   ├── mydisambig.cpp -------> My implementation of a viterbi-based decoding process of the language model
|   ├── separator_big5.pl ----> Separate words into characters with white space inserted in between each character
|   └── testdata/ ------------> testing data 1.txt ~ 5.txt are the easy ones, 6.txt ~ 10.txt are the hard ones
├── image/
├── srilm-1.5.10.tar.gz ------> SRILM binary source code
├── problem_description.pdf --> Work spec
└── Readme.md ----------------> This file

Usage

• Compile code:

make all

• Separate training and testing data into separate characters:

make separate

• Build Zhu-Yin to char mapping:

make map

• This generates 2 files: I) ZhuYin-Big5.map, and II) ZhuYin-Utf8.map where:

I) ZhuYin-Big5.map: the Zhu-Yin to Chinease character mapping in big5 encoding
II) ZhuYin-Utf8.map: the Zhu-Yin to Chinease character mapping in big5 encoding for user verification in ordinary linux environment

• Build language model:

make build_lm

• Decode with SRILM disambig:

make run_disambig

• Decode with MY disambig:

make run

• Decode with MY disambig but show output on screen instead of write to file:

make run_cout

• Clean executables:

make clean

• Clean everything generated in the above steps:

make cleanest

• The variables SRIPATH and MACHINE_TYPE can be specified by the user through the make command:

make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 all
make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 separate
make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 map
make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 build_lm
make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 run_disambig
make MACHINE_TYPE=i686-m64 SRIPATH=/home/user/srilm-1.5.10 run

• Default settings of SRIPATH and MACHINE_TYPE are:
• 
• SRIPATH can be obtained by running the command $ pwd under the srilm-1.5.10/ directory.
• MACHINE_TYPE can be verified through the command: $ lscpu

Environment Setup

Install dependencies

• Install csh if not already installed: $ sudo apt-get install csh
• Install gawk if not already installed: $ sudo apt-get install gawk

Compile SRILM from binary

• The following instructions are for a Ubuntu 64 bit machine.
• 
• Use the SRILM source code provided in this repo, or download it here.
• Untar the source code package: $ tar zxvf srilm-1.5.10.tar.gz
• Enter the resulting SRILM directory: $ cd srilm-1.5.10/
• Get the absolute path to the srilm-1.5.10/ directory: $ pwd
• Modify srilm-1.5.10/Makefile and change the SRILM variable to the absolute path of srilm-1.5.10/, and change the MACHINE_TYPE variable to match the 64-bit Ubuntu architecture:

# SRILM = /home/speech/stolcke/project/srilm/devel
SRILM = /home/andi611/dsp/srilm-1.5.10
# MACHINE_TYPE := $(shell $(SRILM)/sbin/machine-type)
MACHINE_TYPE := i686-m64

• Modify the following lines in srilm-1.5.10/common/Makefile.machine.i686-m64 to:

- line 17: 
    CC = /usr/bin/gcc $(GCC_FLAGS)
- line 18: 
    CXX = /usr/bin/g++ $(GCC_FLAGS) -DINSTANTIATE_TEMPLATES
- Line 52, 53, 54 (Lines under # Tcl support):    
    TCL_INCLUDE =
    TCL_LIBRARY =
    NO_TCL = X
- Line 69: 
    GAWK = /usr/bin/gawk

• Comment out lines 14 ~ 29 in srilm-1.5.10/lm/src/matherr.c since glibc 2.27 has removed struct exception.
• Make sure that all the programs under srilm-1.5.10/sbin are executable, if not: $ sudo chmod 755 *
• Compile: $ sudo make World
• Clean up: $ make cleanest
• The compiled executable files should be in srilm-1.5.10/bin/i686-m64

Other Environment Setup Issues

• Refer to the following links for further environment issues:
  • SRILM compilation problem:
    • FQA 1
    • FQA 2
    • Guide
  • Encoding problem:
    • Sublime Text with BIG5 encoding