System & method for natural language processing of query answers
First Claim
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1. A natural language processing system adapted for responding to a query comprising:
- a query routine adapted to process the user query and to identify a first set of potential answers responsive to the user query;
a natural language routine which performs a first linguistic analysis of text contained in said first set of potential answers to help identify which one or more answers from said first set constitute a best response for the user query;
wherein said first linguistic analysis includes an evaluation of at least individual words in the user query which are in common with said first set of potential answers.
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Abstract
Candidate answers responsive to a user query are analyzed using a natural language engine to determine appropriate answers from an electronic database. The system and methods are useful for Internet based search engines, as well as distributed speech recognition systems such as a client-server system. The latter are typically implemented on an intranet or over the Internet based on user queries at his/her computer, a PDA, or a workstation using a speech input interface.
178 Citations
30 Claims
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1. A natural language processing system adapted for responding to a query comprising:
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a query routine adapted to process the user query and to identify a first set of potential answers responsive to the user query;
a natural language routine which performs a first linguistic analysis of text contained in said first set of potential answers to help identify which one or more answers from said first set constitute a best response for the user query;
wherein said first linguistic analysis includes an evaluation of at least individual words in the user query which are in common with said first set of potential answers. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A query answer evaluation system comprising:
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a query routine adapted to identify a candidate set of potential matches for a text query;
wherein said query routine uses text words from said text query combined with search predicates, including at least an AND and a NEAR operator, to compose a search query suitable for locating said candidate set of potential matches from a database;
a natural language routine adapted to perform a linguistic analysis of text contained in said candidate set of potential matches, such that words and/or word phrases contained in said candidate set of potential matches are identified;
an answer routine adapted to identify which of said candidate set of potential matches is an appropriate response to said text query based on evaluating said words and word phrases. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. An Internet based query recognition and response system comprising:
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a search engine adapted to receive a user sentence based query in text form and construct a database query consisting of words and search predicates suitable for retrieving a set of potential answers to said query;
a natural language routine configured to generate a first linguistic analysis of said set of potential answers, including an identification of first word phrases therein;
an answer identification routine configured for comparing said first word phrases with second word phrases in said user sentence based query to identify a best responsive answer.
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20. A method of recognizing and responding to a natural language based query comprising the steps of:
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(a) receiving query text for a user query; and
(b) linguistically processing said query text to generate search predicates and recognized phrases;
(c) forming a database query to identify a potential match for said user query, said database query being based on said recognized phrases and said search predicates;
(d) determining a match for said user query by linguistically comparing any potential matches identified by said database query with said query text. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A distributed method of performing natural language processing to identify an appropriate answer to user query presented over a network, the method comprising the steps of:
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(a) locating an initial set of answers based on a text string derived from a complete sentence query presented by the user;
(b) evaluating said initial set of answers using a linguistic analysis to compare word phrases in said set of answers with word phrases identified in said query text;
(c) ranking said initial set of answers to identify one or more of said initial set of answers that best match the complete sentence query based on step (b);
(d) providing said one or more of said initial set of answers to the user over the network;
wherein an answer is provided to the user question in real-time over a distributed query system. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
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Specification