Final answer:
In a unigram language model, the probabilities of the phrases "today is Wednesday" and "today Wednesday is" are calculated by multiplying the individual probabilities of the words, with no consideration for word order. Both phrases would have the same calculated probability since order does not matter in unigram models.
Step-by-step explanation:
To calculate the probabilities associated with generating the phrases "today is Wednesday" and "today Wednesday is" using a unigram language model, we must consider the probability of each word occurring independently since unigram models do not take into account the order of words. If we denote P(today), P(is), and P(Wednesday) as the probabilities of the individual words, then the probability of the phrase "today is Wednesday" is the product of the probabilities of those three words: P(today) × P(is) × P(Wednesday). Similarly, the phrase "today Wednesday is" would have the same probability because the order of the words does not affect the calculation in a unigram model: P(today) × P(Wednesday) × P(is).
In natural language, word order often matters, and this is where the unigram model falls short compared to more complex models like bigrams or trigrams which would assign different probabilities to these phrases. Nonetheless, in the context of the unigram model, these phrases are equally likely. To estimate the actual probabilities, one would need access to a corpus of language to determine the frequency of each word.