Knowledge based information retrieval system
First Claim
1. A knowledge based document retrieval system, comprising:
- user input means for inputting, in response to at least one of a user'"'"'s key-typing and mouse operations, a series of words;
display means for displaying responses from said system and retrieved documents;
user input analysis means for analyzing said series of words inputted by said user through said user input means, and converting said series of words into an internal query condition based on information related to various concepts and permitting said user to edit said internal query condition;
a knowledge base for storing knowledge including said concepts and relations among said concepts;
wherein said stored knowledge is represented by concept nodes and relation links forming a network of concepts, wherein each of said nodes represents a concept, and wherein each of said links represents a relation among said concepts;
information search means for identifying concept nodes that match said internal query condition semantically; and
information retrieval means for retrieving at least one relevant document associated with said identified concept nodes;
wherein said user input analysis means includes;
lexicon storing means having contents which are an edited version of said concept network,lexical analysis means for identifying concept nodes from said series of words inputted by said user input means by consulting the contents of said lexicon storing means,syntactic analysis means for identifying a nominal compound in said series of words based on said concept nodes identified by said lexical analysis means, andnominal compound interpretation means for mapping said identified nominal compound relative to said concepts and relations of said knowledge base, inferring meaning of said identified nominal compound based on said concepts and relations of said knowledge base and generating said internal query condition based on said meaning of said identified nominal compound.
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Abstract
An information retrieval system with good human-interface methods to give the system ease-of-use having two distinctive features with the first being visual interface and the second being natural language interpretation. The visual interface provides for visual interaction for local search and natural language interpretation provides for linguistic interaction for global search. The visual interface provides versatile views onto the contents of the knowledge base that the system has, controlling mechanisms for browsing through the knowledge base, a capability of showing relevant information for the users, and a mechanism for editing a query expression that describes information to retrieve. By using the visual interface for information retrieval, the users can easily create query expressions, by consulting and reacting with the system. The natural language interpretation makes use of a conceptual network as a knowledge-base that stores important concepts and relationships among these concepts. Based on knowledge and information represented in the conceptual network, the meaning of a noun phrase or a nominal compound which is a string of adjectives and nouns with some prepositions can be inferred. The inferred interpretation of such a noun phrase is paraphrased into an expression that the information retrieval system can handle. Therefore, the user of the system can simply describe the desired information in a language to get the desired information.
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Citations
16 Claims
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1. A knowledge based document retrieval system, comprising:
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user input means for inputting, in response to at least one of a user'"'"'s key-typing and mouse operations, a series of words; display means for displaying responses from said system and retrieved documents; user input analysis means for analyzing said series of words inputted by said user through said user input means, and converting said series of words into an internal query condition based on information related to various concepts and permitting said user to edit said internal query condition; a knowledge base for storing knowledge including said concepts and relations among said concepts; wherein said stored knowledge is represented by concept nodes and relation links forming a network of concepts, wherein each of said nodes represents a concept, and wherein each of said links represents a relation among said concepts; information search means for identifying concept nodes that match said internal query condition semantically; and information retrieval means for retrieving at least one relevant document associated with said identified concept nodes; wherein said user input analysis means includes; lexicon storing means having contents which are an edited version of said concept network, lexical analysis means for identifying concept nodes from said series of words inputted by said user input means by consulting the contents of said lexicon storing means, syntactic analysis means for identifying a nominal compound in said series of words based on said concept nodes identified by said lexical analysis means, and nominal compound interpretation means for mapping said identified nominal compound relative to said concepts and relations of said knowledge base, inferring meaning of said identified nominal compound based on said concepts and relations of said knowledge base and generating said internal query condition based on said meaning of said identified nominal compound. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3)
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4. A knowledge-based document retrieval system, comprising:
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user input means for inputting, in response to at least one of a user'"'"'s key-typing and mouse operations, a series of words; user interaction means for creating a query expression and an internal query condition from a dialogue, including said inputted series of words, between said user and said system, wherein said query expression is a displayed version of said internal query condition for said user to permit editing by said user, said query expression and said internal query condition being created based on information related to various concepts; a knowledge base for storing knowledge including said concepts and relations among said concepts, wherein said stored knowledge is represented by concept nodes and relation links forming a concept network, wherein each of said nodes represents a concept, and wherein each of said links represents a relation among said concepts; information search means for identifying concept nodes that match said internal query condition semantically; information retrieval means for retrieving at least one relevant document associated with said identified concept nodes; and display means for displaying responses from said system and retrieved documents; wherein said user interaction means includes; query editing means for adding to said internal query condition a new condition phrase having concepts and relations defined in said concept network, deleting one of existing condition phrases, and changing one of concepts in said condition phrases to a different concept in response to said series of words inputted by said user, query expression display means for displaying on said display means said query expression corresponding to said internal query condition being created and edited, and concept tree display means for displaying on said display means part of said concept network in a hierarchical tree, wherein said tree includes one of the concepts appearing in said query expression. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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9. A document retrieval system using a conceptual network, comprising:
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a knowledge base for storing a plurality of words representing concepts and a plurality of predicates representing relations between the plurality of words; input means for inputting words; display means for displaying words; processing means, responsive to inputting of a word representing a concept which serves as a query key from said input means, for retrieving a word representing a concept in association with the inputted word from said knowledge base, and for displaying on said display means at least one word having a relation with said inputted word and at least one predicate representing said relation with said inputted word; editing means for selecting, in response to said user, a set of a desired word and a predicate from those displayed on said display means and inputting, by said user, a new word subsumed by the selected word to produce a query condition in which said inputted word and the newly inputted word are associated with each other by said selected predicate; and means for retrieving at least one relevant document related to said query condition.
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10. A document retrieving method in an intellectual retrieval system, comprising the steps, performed by said intellectual retrieval system, of:
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storing a plurality of words representing concepts and relations between the plurality of words as a knowledge base; displaying on a screen a query condition defined by selected words and predicates representing relations between the selected words, and displaying a plurality of other words and relations between the words, said plurality of other words having a relation with a certain word in said query condition and being stored in said knowledge base; permitting a user of said intellectual retrieval system to select one word and one relation from the displayed plurality of other words and relations; rewriting and displaying said query condition in accordance with the selected word and the relation; and retrieving at least one relevant document related to said query condition. - View Dependent Claims (11)
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16. A knowledge-based document retrieval system, comprising:
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user input means for inputting, in response to at least one of a user'"'"'s key-typing and mouse operations, a series of words; a knowledge base for storing knowledge including concepts and relations among said concepts, wherein said stored knowledge is represented by concept nodes and relation links forming a concept network, wherein each of said nodes represents a concept, and wherein each of said links represent a relation among said concepts; information storage means for storing said knowledge base and documents, wherein each document has a corresponding concept node defined in said knowledge base; information search means for identifying concept nodes that match an internal query condition represented in terms of concepts and relations defined in said knowledge base; information retrieval means for retrieving documents from said information storage means, wherein said documents are associated with said identified concept nodes; display means for displaying responses from said system and retrieved documents; and user interaction means for creating said internal query condition from a dialogue, including said inputted series of words, between said user and said system, wherein said internal query condition is displayed in a query expression to permit said user to edit; wherein said user interaction means includes; query editing means for adding to said internal query condition a new condition phrase having concepts and relations defined in said knowledge base, deleting one of existing condition phrases, and changing one of concepts in said condition phrases to a different concept in said knowledge base in response to said series of words inputted by said user, query expression display means for displaying on said display means said query expression which is a display version of said internal query condition being created and edited, and concept tree display means for displaying on said display means a subset of concepts defined in said knowledge base in a hierarchical tree, wherein said tree includes one of the concepts appearing in said query internal condition being edited.
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Specification