System and method for template authoring and a template data structure

• US 20060200337A1
• Filed: 03/04/2005
• Published: 09/07/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Johnson, Ian, Cipollone, Domenic, Broman Olsen, Mari, Music, Bradley, Valdes, Rene
• Application Number:
  US11/072,799
• Publication Number:
  US 20060200337A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/242 Dictionaries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/268 Morphological analysis

Abstract

The present invention provides a lexicon development tool which allows an author to first define templates which define morphological properties of a class of words and then assign words in an input word list to correct templates. The present invention can be used to automatically match a template to an input word or the words can be matched to templates manually. In addition, the present invention can provide a wide variety of different processing components to sort or otherwise process an input word list and to test and export a lexicon, once it has been authored. The tool can provide an authoring environment to describe the lexical data of a wide variety of languages.

Claims

1. A method of authoring a set of predefined lexical templates for being linked to words to form lexical entries in a lexicon, comprising:

identifying a set of parts-of-speech (POS);

generating a template class for each POS, the template class including morphological data based on the morphological categories for the corresponding POS; and

generating a set of templates for each template class, the templates inheriting the morphological data from the template class and further defining morphological forms for groups of words having the POS.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein generating a set of templates comprises:

entering a template name in the template.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein generating a template comprises:

entering a number of stems represented by the template.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein generating a template comprises:

entering constraints associated with the stems.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the morphological data in the template class includes generated form names representative of inflectional forms of each stem.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein generating a template comprises:

entering rules for each generated form, the rules defining how the generated forms are obtained from the stem.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein generating a template comprises:

entering a stem identifier associating each rule with a stem.

8. A data structure defining a template for being linked to words to form lexical entries in a lexicon, comprising:

a set of template classes each template class including a list of types of inflectional forms defined for a part-of-speech represented by the template class; and

a set of templates corresponding to each template class, the templates defining ways in which words belonging to the part-of-speech relate to one another in different inflectional forms.

9. The data structure of claim 8 wherein each template includes a stem portion indicative of a stem value.

10. The data structure of claim 9 wherein the stem portion includes a stem constraint portion indicative of a constraint on the stem value.

11. The data structure of claim 9 wherein each template includes a generated forms portion with rules indicative of modifications to an associated stem value to obtain a morphological form of the stem value.

12. The data structure of claim 11 wherein the rules are hierarchically arranged rule components, a descendent rule component including all rule components in an ancestor rule component and adding an additional rule component

13. The data structure of claim 11 wherein the rules include functions.

14. The data structure of claim 11 wherein the generated forms portion includes a primary form indicator indicating which generated form is a primary form.

15. A computer readable medium storing computer readable instructions which, when executed, cause a computer to perform steps of:

generating a template class for each of a plurality of parts-of-speech (POS), the template class including morphological data indicative of morphological categories for the corresponding POS; and

generating a set of templates for each template class, the templates inheriting the morphological data from the template class and further defining morphological properties for groups of words having the POS.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein generating a template comprises:

receiving and displaying a number of stems represented by the template.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16 wherein generating a template comprises:

receiving and displaying constraints associated with the stems.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 16 wherein the morphological data in the template class includes generated form names representative of inflectional forms of each stem.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 16 wherein generating a template comprises:

receiving and displaying rules for each of a set of generated forms, the rules defining how the generated forms are obtained from the stem.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 19 wherein generating a template comprises:

receiving and displaying a stem identifier associating each rule with a stem.