An efficient Chinese word segmentation algorithm for Chinese information processing on the Internet

A Chinese word segmentation algorithm based on forward maximum matching and word binding force is proposed in this paper. To support this algorithm, a text corpus of over 63 millions characters is employed to enrich an 80,000-words lexicon in terms of its word entries and word binding forces. As it stands now, given as input line of text, the word segmentor can process on the average 210,000 characters per second when running on an IBM RISC System/6000 3BT workstation with a correct word identification rate of 99.74%. The proposed word segmentation algorithm can be applied to process the huge amount of Chinese information on the Internet.