Constrained permutations for computing textual similarity

Abstract

A wide range of algorithms for computing textual similarity have been proposed. Much recent work has been aimed at calculating lexical similarity, but in general such calculations have to be treated as components in larger algorithms for computing similarity between sentences. In the current paper we describe a refinement of the well-known dynamic-time warping (DTW) algorithm for calculating the string edit distance between a pair of texts. The refined version of this algorithm allows for a range of constrained permutations without increasing the complexity of the underlying algorithm.