diff --git a/ner/config/ner.properties b/ner/config/ner.properties
index bf148ec29..fd3c72d5c 100644
--- a/ner/config/ner.properties
+++ b/ner/config/ner.properties
@@ -6,4 +6,7 @@ modelName = CoNLL
 
 # A path to the model files. During training this will be the location where the models are stored.
 # During testing this parameter can point to either a classpath or a local directory.
-pathToModelFile = ner/models
\ No newline at end of file
+pathToModelFile = ner/models
+
+GazetteersFeatures = 0
+BrownClusterPaths = 0
diff --git a/ner/src/main/java/edu/illinois/cs/cogcomp/ner/ExpressiveFeatures/CharacterLanguageModel.java b/ner/src/main/java/edu/illinois/cs/cogcomp/ner/ExpressiveFeatures/CharacterLanguageModel.java
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f5c5cd538
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ner/src/main/java/edu/illinois/cs/cogcomp/ner/ExpressiveFeatures/CharacterLanguageModel.java
@@ -0,0 +1,264 @@
+package edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.ner.ExpressiveFeatures;
+
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.core.datastructures.Pair;
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.core.io.LineIO;
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.core.utilities.StringUtils;
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.core.utilities.configuration.ResourceManager;
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.lbjava.parse.LinkedVector;
+import edu.illinois.cs.cogcomp.ner.LbjTagger.*;
+
+import javax.annotation.Resource;
+import java.io.File;
+import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.util.*;
+
+public class CharacterLanguageModel {
+
+    private HashMap<String, HashMap<String, Double>> counts;
+    private int order;
+    private String pad = "_";
+
+    public CharacterLanguageModel(){
+        // parameterized how? order of ngrams?
+        // what kind of backoff?
+        // what kind of interpolation?
+        // let's just start with none.
+
+        // counts maps: history -> { word: count, word : count, etc }
+        counts = new HashMap<>();
+        order = 6;
+    }
+
+
+    /**
+     * Actually returns the log perplexity.
+     * @param seq
+     * @return
+     */
+    public double perplexity(List<String> seq){
+        // get perplexity wrt counts
+
+        List<String> sequence = new ArrayList<>(seq);
+        for(int i = 0; i < order; i++){
+            sequence.add(0, pad);
+        }
+
+        double logppl = 0;
+
+        for(int j = order; j < sequence.size(); j++){
+            // simple stupid backoff.
+            double prob = 0.001;
+            // history and word
+            String word = sequence.get(j);
+            String history = StringUtils.join("", sequence.subList(j-order, j));
+
+            HashMap<String, Double> hist_counts = counts.getOrDefault(history, null);
+            if(hist_counts != null){
+                prob = hist_counts.getOrDefault(word, prob);
+            }
+
+            logppl += Math.log(1. / prob);
+        }
+
+        logppl /= sequence.size();
+
+        return Math.exp(logppl);
+
+    }
+
+    public static void trainEntityNotEntity(Data trainData, Data testData) throws IOException {
+
+        List<List<String>> entities = new ArrayList<>();
+        List<List<String>> nonentities = new ArrayList<>();
+
+        for(NERDocument doc : trainData.documents){
+            for(LinkedVector sentence : doc.sentences){
+                for(int i = 0; i < sentence.size(); i++) {
+                    NEWord word = (NEWord) sentence.get(i);
+                    if(word.neLabel.equals("O")){
+                        nonentities.add(string2list(word.form));
+                    }else {
+                        entities.add(string2list(word.form));
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+        }
+
+        CharacterLanguageModel eclm = new CharacterLanguageModel();
+        eclm.train(entities);
+
+        CharacterLanguageModel neclm = new CharacterLanguageModel();
+        neclm.train(nonentities);
+
+        double correct = 0;
+        double total = 0;
+        List<String> outpreds = new ArrayList<>();
+        for(NERDocument doc : testData.documents){
+            for(LinkedVector sentence : doc.sentences){
+                for(int i = 0; i < sentence.size(); i++) {
+                    NEWord word = (NEWord) sentence.get(i);
+                    String label = word.neLabel.equals("O")? "O" : "B-ENT";
+                    double eppl = eclm.perplexity(string2list(word.form));
+                    double neppl = neclm.perplexity(string2list(word.form));
+
+                    String pred;
+
+                    if(word.form.length() < 3){
+                        pred = "O";
+                    }else if(eppl < neppl){
+                        pred = "B-ENT";
+                    }else{
+                        pred = "O";
+                    }
+
+                    if (pred.equals(label)){
+                        //System.out.println(word.form + ": correct");
+                        correct += 1;
+                    }else{
+                        System.out.println(word.form + ": WRONG***");
+                    }
+                    total +=1;
+
+                    outpreds.add(word.form + " " + label + " " + pred);
+                }
+                outpreds.add("");
+            }
+        }
+
+        System.out.println("Accuracy: " + correct / total);
+
+        LineIO.write("pred.txt", outpreds);
+        System.out.println("Wrote to pred.txt. Now run $ conlleval pred.txt to get F1 scores.");
+
+    }
+
+    public void train(List<List<String>> sequences){
+
+        for(List<String> sequence : sequences){
+            for(int i = 0; i < order; i++){
+                sequence.add(0, pad);
+            }
+
+            for(int j = order; j < sequence.size(); j++){
+                // history and word
+                String word = sequence.get(j);
+                String history = StringUtils.join("", sequence.subList(j-order, j));
+
+                HashMap<String, Double> hist_counts = counts.getOrDefault(history, new HashMap<>());
+                double cnt = hist_counts.getOrDefault(word, 0.0);
+                hist_counts.put(word, cnt + 1);
+                counts.put(history, hist_counts);
+            }
+        }
+
+        // normalize counts, so everything is a probability?
+        // potentially also do backoff here.
+        // now these are probabilities.
+        for(String hist : counts.keySet()){
+            HashMap<String, Double> hist_counts = counts.get(hist);
+            double total = hist_counts.values().stream().mapToDouble(i -> i.doubleValue()).sum();
+            for(String w : hist_counts.keySet()){
+                double cnt = hist_counts.get(w);
+                hist_counts.put(w, cnt / total);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
+    public static List<String> string2list(String s){
+        List<String> chars = new ArrayList<>();
+        for(char c : s.toCharArray()){
+            chars.add(c + "");
+        }
+        return chars;
+    }
+
+    public static void test() throws FileNotFoundException {
+        String dir = "/home/mayhew/data/pytorch-example/data/names/";
+        File names = new File(dir);
+        String[] fnames = names.list();
+        HashMap<String, CharacterLanguageModel> name2clm = new HashMap<>();
+
+        Random rand = new Random(1234567);
+
+        List<Pair<String, String>> testexamples = new ArrayList<>();
+
+        for(String fname : fnames){
+            System.out.println(fname);
+            List<String> lines = LineIO.read(dir + fname);
+
+            Collections.shuffle(lines, rand);
+
+            int splitpoint = (int) Math.round(lines.size()*0.8);
+            List<String> lines_train = lines.subList(0, splitpoint);
+            List<String> lines_test = lines.subList(splitpoint, lines.size());
+
+            List<List<String>> seqs = new ArrayList<>();
+            for(String name : lines_train){
+                List<String> chars = string2list(name);
+                seqs.add(chars);
+            }
+
+            CharacterLanguageModel clm = new CharacterLanguageModel();
+            clm.train(seqs);
+
+            name2clm.put(fname, clm);
+
+            for(String line : lines_test){
+                testexamples.add(new Pair(line, fname));
+            }
+        }
+
+        // probably not strictly necessary.
+        Collections.shuffle(testexamples,rand);
+
+        float correct = 0;
+        for(Pair<String, String> ex : testexamples){
+            String word = ex.getFirst();
+            String label = ex.getSecond();
+
+            List<String> chars = string2list(word);
+
+            double best = 1000000000;
+            String pred = null;
+            for(String fname : name2clm.keySet()) {
+                CharacterLanguageModel clm = name2clm.get(fname);
+                double ppl = clm.perplexity(chars);
+                if(pred == null || ppl < best){
+                    best = ppl;
+                    pred = fname;
+                }
+            }
+
+            if(pred.equals(label)){
+                correct += 1;
+            }
+        }
+
+        System.out.println("Accuracy: " + correct / testexamples.size());
+        System.out.println("Total number: " + testexamples.size());
+
+
+    }
+
+    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
+        // this trains models, and provides perplexities.
+        //test();
+
+        ParametersForLbjCode params = Parameters.readConfigAndLoadExternalData("config/ner.properties", false);
+
+//        String trainpath= "/shared/corpora/ner/conll2003/eng-files/Train-json/";
+//        String testpath = "/shared/corpora/ner/conll2003/eng-files/Test-json/";
+
+        String trainpath= "/shared/corpora/ner/lorelei-swm-new/ben/Train/";
+        String testpath = "/shared/corpora/ner/lorelei-swm-new/ben/Test/";
+
+
+        Data trainData = new Data(trainpath, trainpath, "-json", new String[] {}, new String[] {}, params);
+        Data testData = new Data(testpath, testpath, "-json", new String[] {}, new String[] {}, params);
+
+        trainEntityNotEntity(trainData, testData);
+    }
+
+
+}