METHODS AND APPARATUSES FOR MINING SYNONYMOUS PHRASES, AND FOR SEARCHING RELATED CONTENT

• US 20140379329A1
• Filed: 06/20/2014
• Published: 12/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2013
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
• Inventors: Huang, Peng, Lin, Feng, Dong, Xinghua, Wu, Kewen
• Application Number:
  US14/311,079
• Publication Number:
  US 20140379329A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/247 Thesauruses; Synonyms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/263 Language identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/45 Example-based machine translation; Alignment

Abstract

The present disclosure is related to a method and an apparatus of mining synonymous phrases. The method comprises: obtaining, according to a parallel text corpus, a first phrase-alignment relationship from phrases of a current language to phrases of an intermediate language, and a second phrase-alignment relationship from the phrases of the intermediate language to the phrases of the current language; obtaining, for a target phrase of current language, a first set of aligned phrases of the intermediate language that are aligned with the target phrase of the current language based on the first phrase-alignment relationship; obtaining a second set of aligned phrases of the current language that are aligned with selected phrase(s) in the first set of aligned phrases based on the second phrase-alignment relationship; and obtaining synonymous phrases for the target phrase from the second set of aligned phrases.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for mining synonymous phrases, comprising:

obtaining, according to a parallel text corpus, a first phrase-alignment relationship from current language phrases to intermediate language phrases, and a second phrase-alignment relationship from the intermediate language phrases to the current language phrases;

obtaining, with respect to a target phrase of current language, a first set of aligned phrases of the intermediate language that are aligned with the target phrase based on the first phrase-alignment relationship;

obtaining a second set of aligned phrases of the current language that are aligned with one or more selected phrases in the first set of aligned phrases based on the second phrase-alignment relationship; and

obtaining synonymous phrases for the target phrase from the second set of aligned phrases.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the first phrase-alignment relationship further comprises:

obtaining a word-aligning relationship between current language words and intermediate language words in each parallel sentence pair of the parallel text corpus;

extracting aligned phrase pairs based on the word-aligning relationship;

obtaining, with respect to a current language phrase of each phrase pair, all intermediate language phrases that are aligned with the current language phrase based on the extracted phrase pairs, and thereby obtaining the first phrase-alignment relationship from the current language phrases to the intermediate language phrases; and

obtaining, with respect to an intermediate language phrase of each phrase pair, all current language phrases that are aligned with the intermediate language phrase based on the extracted phrase pairs, and thereby obtaining the second phrase alignment relationship from the intermediate language phrases to the intermediate language phrases.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the first set of aligned phrases further comprises:

selecting the intermediate language phrases that are aligned with the target current language phrase based on a degree of semantic similarity between each intermediate language phrase and the target phrase in the first phrase-alignment relationship to form the first set of aligned phrases.

4. The method of claim 1, where obtaining the second set of aligned phrases further comprises:

selecting the current language phrases that are aligned with the selected phrase in the first set of aligned phrases based on a degree of semantic similarity between each current language phrase and the selected phrase in the first phrase-alignment relationship to form the second set of aligned phrases.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the synonymous phrases further comprises:

selecting the synonymous phrases of the target phrase based on a degree of semantic similarity between each phrase in the second set of aligned phrases and the target phrase.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

repeating the obtaining of the first set of aligned phrases, the obtaining of the second set of aligned phrases and the obtaining of the synonymous phrases for one or more phrases selected from the synonymous phrases that are taken as target phrases of the current language respectively, and thereby obtaining synonymous phrases of the one or more phrases selected from the synonymous phrases;

taking the selected synonymous phrases and the obtained synonymous phrases of the one or more selected phrases of the synonymous phrases as the synonymous phrases of the target phrases.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

filtering the synonymous phrases of the target phrase according to a predetermined rule.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the predetermined rule comprises at least one of:

determining whether a synonymous phrase includes a word in a disabled words list;

determining whether the synonymous phrase includes a word in a prohibited words list;

determining whether the synonymous phrase includes a punctuation mark;

determining whether there is a covering relationship between the synonymous phrase and the target phrase; and

determining whether any of two phrases in the synonymous phrases are identical after a phrase root thereof is extracted.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a search keyword based on a received search request;

obtaining a synonymous phrase of the search keyword with the search keyword being taken as the target phrase; and

searching and displaying relevant content based on the search keyword and the synonymous phrase of the search keyword.

10. An apparatus of mining synonymous phrases, comprising:

an alignment relationship acquisition module used for obtaining, according to a parallel text corpus, a first phrase-alignment relationship from phrases of a current language to phrases of an intermediate language, and a second phrase-alignment relationship from the phrases of the intermediate language to the phrases of the current language;

a first set acquisition module used for obtaining, with respect to a target phrase of the current language, a first set of aligned phrases of the intermediate language that are aligned with the target phrase of the current language based on the first phrase-alignment relationship;

a second set acquisition module used for obtaining a second set of aligned phrases of the current language that are aligned with selected phrase(s) in the first set of aligned phrases based on the second phrase-alignment relationship; and

a synonymous phrase acquisition module used for obtaining synonymous phrases of the target phrase from the second set of aligned phrases.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the alignment relationship acquisition module further comprises:

a word-aligning relationship acquisition sub-module used for obtaining a word-aligning relationship between words of the current language and words of the intermediate language in each parallel sentence pair of the parallel text corpus;

a phrase pair extracting sub-module used for extracting aligned phrase pairs based on the word-aligning relationship;

a first alignment relationship acquisition sub-module used for obtaining, for a phrase of the current language in each phrase pair, all phrases of the intermediate language that are aligned with the phrase of the current language based on the extracted phrase pairs, and thereby obtaining the first phrase-alignment relationship from the phrases of the current language to the phrases of the intermediate language; and

a second alignment relationship acquisition sub-module used for obtaining, for a phrase of the intermediate language in each phrase pair, all phrases of the current language that are aligned with the phrase of the intermediate language based on the extracted phrase pairs, and thereby obtaining the second phrase-alignment relationship from the phrases of the intermediate language to the phrases of the current language.

12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the first set acquisition module further comprises:

a first selecting sub-module used for selecting the phrases of the intermediate language that are aligned with the target phrase based on a degree of semantic similarity between each phrase of the intermediate language and the target phrase in the first phrase-alignment relationship to form the first set of aligned phrases.

13. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the second set acquisition module further comprises:

a second selecting sub-module used for selecting the phrases of the current language that are aligned with the selected phrase(s) in the first set of aligned phrases based on degrees of semantic similarity between each phrase of the current language and the selected phrases in the first set of aligned phrases in the first phrase-alignment relationship to form the second set of aligned phrases.

14. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the synonymous phrase acquisition module further comprises:

a third selecting sub-module used for selecting the synonymous phrases of the target phrase based on a degree of semantic similarity between each phrase in the second set of aligned phrases and the target phrase.

15. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprising a repeating module used for:

repeating the obtaining of the first set of aligned phrases, the obtaining of the second set of aligned phrases and the obtaining of the synonymous phrases for one or more phrases selected from the synonymous phrases that are taken as target phrases of the current language respectively, and thereby obtaining synonymous phrases of the one or more phrases selected from the synonymous phrases; and

taking the selected synonymous phrases and the obtained synonymous phrases of the one or more phrases of the synonymous phrases as the synonymous phrases of the target phrases.

16. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprising:

a filtering module used for filtering the synonymous phrases of the target phrase according to a predetermined rule.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the predetermined rule comprise at least one of:

determining whether a synonymous phrase includes a word in a disabled words list;

determining whether the synonymous phrase includes a word in a prohibited words list;

determining whether the synonymous phrase includes a punctuation mark;

determining whether there is a covering relationship between the synonymous phrase and the target phrase; and

determining whether any of two phrases in the synonymous phrases are identical after a phrase root thereof is extracted.

18. The apparatus of claim 10, further comprising:

a keyword determining module used for determining a search keyword based on a received search request;

a synonymous phrase mining module used for obtaining a synonymous phrase of the search keyword by taking the search keyword as the target phrase; and

a search and display module used for searching and displaying relevant content based on the search keyword and the synonymous phrase of the search keyword.

19. One or more computer-readable media storing executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform acts comprising:

determining a search keyword of a current language based on a received search request;

obtaining a first set of aligned phrases of an intermediate language that are aligned with the search keyword based on a first phrase-alignment relationship from current language phrases to intermediate language phrases;

obtaining a second set of aligned phrases of the current language that are aligned with one or more selected phrases in the first set of aligned phrases based on a second phrase-alignment relationship from the intermediate language phrases to the current language phrases; and

obtaining one or more synonymous phrases for the search keyword from the second set of aligned phrases; and

searching and displaying related content based on the search keyword and the one or more synonymous phrases of the search keyword.

20. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 19, the acts further comprising filtering the one or more synonymous phrases of the search keyword according to a predetermined rule.