1. An apparatus for segmenting compound words in a natural-language input, the apparatus comprising: a startpoint probability matrix; a endpoint probability matrix; a probabilistic breakpoint analyzer having access to the startpoint probability matrix, the endpoint probability matrix and the natural-language input, the probabilistic breakpoint analyzer being operative to generate a breakpoint-annotated input from the natural-language input; and a probabilistic breakpoint processor coupled to the probabilistic breakpoint analyzer, the probabilistic breakpoint processor being operative to generate a segmented string for the compound words in the natural-language input in response to the breakpoint-annotated input.