1. A method for processing acoustically-based events according to a predefined plurality of component events, each component event having a recognition model and having corresponding distributions of recognition scores resulting from application of the recognition model to acoustically-based events, the method comprising: accepting data characterizing a detected instance of an acoustically-based event that is represented by a set of component events, said data including a first recognition score for said detected instance of the acoustically-based event; accepting, for each recognition model of a component event, a plurality of distributions of recognition scores, each distribution of recognition scores for a recognition model being associated with a corresponding different class of a plurality of possible classes, the possible classes including at least a class of true occurrences; and scoring the detected instance of the acoustically-based event, including computing a second recognition score for said detected instance of the acoustically-based event using (i) the accepted distributions of recognition scores for the set of component events used to represent the acoustically-based event, and (ii) the first recognition score for the acoustically-based event.