Embodiments presented herein describe techniques for generating a linguistic model of input data obtained from a data source (e.g., a video camera). According to one embodiment of the present disclosure, a sequence of symbols is generated based on an ordered stream of normalized vectors generated from the input data. A dictionary of words is generated from combinations of the ordered sequence of symbols based on a frequency at which combinations of symbols appear in the ordered sequence of symbols. A plurality of phrases is generated based an ordered sequence of words from the dictionary observed in the ordered sequence of symbols based on a frequency by which combinations of words in ordered sequence of words appear relative to one another.