BROWSING KNOWLEDGE ON THE BASIS OF SEMANTIC RELATIONS

• US 20090070322A1
• Filed: 08/29/2008
• Published: 03/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Powerset (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: PELL, BARNEY D., AHN, DAVID, O'CONNOR, BRENDAN, BIEWALD, LUKAS A., CROUCH, RICHARD S., THIONE, GIOVANNI LORENZO, SALVETTI, FRANCO
• Application Number:
  US12/201,978
• Publication Number:
  US 20090070322A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3334 Selection or weighting of terms from queries, including natural language queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results

Abstract

Computer-readable media and computer systems for conducting semantic processes to facilitate navigation of search results that include sets of tuples representing facts associated with content of documents in response to queries for information. Content of documents is accessed and semantic structures are derived by distilling linguistic representations from the content. Groups of two or more related words, called tuples, are extracted from the documents or the semantic structures. Tuples can be stored at a tuple index. Representations of the relational tuples are displayed in addition to documents retrieved in response to a query.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of facilitating user navigation of search results by presenting relational tuples that summarize facts associated with the search results, the method comprising:

receiving a query comprising one or more search terms selected by a user;

identifying a relevant passage in a document, wherein the relevant passage satisfies the query;

extracting a relevant tuple from the relevant passage, the relevant tuple representing a fact expressed within the relevant passage, wherein the fact satisfies the query; and

presenting to the user at least one of the relevant passage and a representation of the relevant tuple.

2. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1, further comprising:

generating a tuple query comprising a search tuple extracted from the one or more search terms; and

comparing the search tuple against a plurality of indexed tuples stored in a tuple index to identify the relevant tuple, wherein the relevant tuple has been extracted from, and is mapped to, the relevant passage.

3. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 2, wherein the search tuple comprises at least one role element having a wildcard word assigned thereto.

4. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 2, wherein each of the plurality of indexed tuples includes at least a subject or object role and a relation.

5. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 4, wherein each of the subject or object role and the relation has a corresponding word assigned thereto.

6. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 2, further comprising:

identifying a plurality of additional relevant tuples from the tuple index, wherein at least one of the plurality of additional relevant tuples represents a fact expressed within at least one additional relevant passage;

ranking the relevant passage and the at least one additional relevant passage according to an annotation associated with at least one of the relevant tuples; and

presenting the at least one additional relevant passage and a representation of each of a subset of the plurality of additional relevant tuples.

7. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 6, wherein the at least one annotation comprises information derived from user feedback.

8. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the representation of each of the subset is generated using data that is opaque to the tuple index.

9. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 8, wherein at least one representation comprises a hyperlink to a corresponding relevant passage.

10. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of facilitating user navigation of search results by presenting relational tuples that summarize facts associated with the search results, the method comprising:

receiving a set of content semantics comprising a set of semantic words, wherein each of the set of semantic words comprises a word and a corresponding role;

expanding each of the semantic words according to its corresponding role to generate a plurality of tuple elements, wherein expanding each of the at semantic words comprises identifying a hypernym associated with each of the semantic words;

deriving a cross-product of tuple elements from the plurality of tuple elements to generate a plurality of relevant tuples, wherein each of the plurality of relevant tuples comprises a fact associated with the set of content semantics;

creating a set of filtered tuples by applying at least one interest rule to filter the plurality of relevant tuples and indexing the filtered tuples in a tuple index to create indexed tuples;

receiving a tuple query that comprises a search tuple; and

presenting a set of matching indexed tuples in response to the tuple query, wherein the set of matching indexed tuples comprises indexed tuples having one or more elements in common with the search tuple.

11. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the search tuple comprises an incomplete tuple that includes at least one tuple element having an unassigned role.

12. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the search tuple comprises an incomplete tuple that includes at least one tuple element having an unassigned word with a corresponding assigned role.

13. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein each of the indexed tuples comprises:

a first word corresponding to a subject role;

a second word corresponding to an object role; and

a third word corresponding to a relation role.

14. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 13, wherein each of the indexed tuples further comprises a fourth word corresponding to a time role.

15. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the at least one interest rule comprises a filter that eliminates tuples containing pronouns.

16. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the at least one interest rule filters the relevant tuples on the basis of learned user preferences.

17. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein presenting the set of matching indexed tuples comprises generating a representation of the set of matching indexed tuples using data that is opaque to the tuple index.

18. A computer system capable of presenting at least one relational tuple as part of a search result that presents at least one document in response to a query, the computer system comprising a computer storage medium having a plurality of computer software components embodied thereon, the computer software components comprising:

a query parsing component that receives the search terms from a client device;

a document parsing component that inspects a data store, over a network, to access the at least one document and the content therein;

a tuple extraction component that extracts the at least one relational tuple from the at least one document; and

a rendering component that causes a passage from the at least one document and a representation of the at least one relational tuple to be displayed via the client device.

19. The system of claim 18, further comprising:

a semantic interpretation component that derives a proposition from the search terms based on a semantic relationship of the search terms, wherein the proposition is a logical representation of a conceptual meaning of the search terms;

a tuple query component that extracts a tuple query from the proposition, the tuple query comprises a search tuple representing a fact associated with the conceptual meaning of the search terms; and

a matching component that compares the search tuple against a plurality of indexed relational tuples stored in a tuple index to identify a matching indexed relational tuple, wherein the matching indexed relational tuple comprises a pointer to the at least one document.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising an opaque storage component for storing opaque data that is used to generate a representation of the at least one relational tuple.