3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the computing a similarity measure comprises computing at least one factored word sequence kernel.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the computing a similarity measure comprises computing at least one factored word sequence kernel. 7. The method of claim 3 , wherein the factored word sequence kernel has the general form: K n ⁡ ( s , t ) = ∑ I , J ⁢ ⁢ λ l ⁡ ( I ) + l ⁡ ( J ) ⁢ ∏ k = 1 n ⁢ ⁢ ( ∑ h = 1 p ⁢ ⁢ w h 2 ⁢ k h ⁡ ( s i k ⁡ [ h ] , t j k ⁡ [ h ] ) ) where S and t represent the first and second sequences; n represents a length of the shared subsequences to be used in the computation; I and J represent two of the subsequences of size n of indices ranging on the positions of the symbols in s and t respectively; λ represents an optional decay factor which weights gaps in non-contiguous sequences; l(I) represents the length, as the number of symbols plus any gaps, spanned by the subsequence I in s; l(J) represents the length, as the number of symbols plus any gaps, spanned by the subsequence J in t, respectively; W h represents the weight of each factor in a set of h factors; and k h represents the similarity score between two symbols s i k , and t j k of sequences s and t , respectively, for a given factor h.