A GRU-based Pipeline Approach for Word-Sentence Segmentation and Punctuation Restoration in English

Abstract

In this study, we propose a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) model to restore the following features: word and sentence boundaries, periods, commas, and capitalisation for unformatted English text. We approach feature restoration as a binary classifcation task where the model learns to predict whether a feature should be restored or not. A pipeline approach is proposed, in which only one feature (word boundary, sentence boundary, punctuation, capitalisation) is restored in each component of the pipeline model. To optimise the model, we conducted a grid search on the parameters. The effect of changing the order of the pipeline is also investigated experimentally; PERIODS > COMMAS > SPACES > CASING yielded the best result. Our fndings highlight several specifc action points with optimisation potential to be targeted in follow-up research.