Most forms of communication rely on transmission of groups of discrete elements arranged in a manner that is understood by both the transmitting and a receiving party. Accurate communication between the transmitter and a receiver depends on the message formed by the groups of discrete elements, or symbols, being transmitted uncorrupted and intact between the two parties. Corrupted streams of symbols or discrete elements that comprise a communications system having a known structure and probabilities can sometimes still accurately convey a message to a person capable of reconstructing the stream without the corruption. However, there are drawbacks to using existing speech recognition methods when reconstructing sequences of symbols, such as phonemes in a spoken communication. This invention provides a method and system for reconstructing sequences of symbols using language parameters and a statistical assessment of the effects of known symbols on unknown symbols by using statistical analysis to reconstruct a sequence of symbols that is missing parts of the sequence.