Identifying information related to an input word in an electronic dictionary

• US 5,995,922 A
• Filed: 05/02/1996
• Issued: 11/30/1999
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Richardson, Steve, Penteroudakis, Joseph E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Isen, Forester W.
• Assistant Examiner(s): EDOUARD, PATRICK NESTOR
• Application Number:
  US08/641,804
• Time in Patent Office: 1,307 Days
• Field of Search: 704/1, 704/9, 704/10, 707/530, 707/532
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3334 Selection or weighting of terms from queries, including natural language queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3335 Syntactic pre-processing, e.g. stopword elimination, stemming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/247 Thesauruses; Synonyms

Abstract

A method and system for retrieving information from an electronic dictionary. The system stores all information about words that have the same normalized form into a single entry within the electronic dictionary. The normalized form of a word has all lower case letters and no diacritical marks. When information is to be retrieved from the dictionary for a word, the word is first normalized and then the dictionary is searched for the entry corresponding to that normalized word. The entry that is found contains the information for that word.

Claims

1. A method in a computer system for identifying information in an electronic dictionary related to an input word, the electronic dictionary having records, each record being identified by a head word, the method comprising:

designating the input word as a designated word and providing an initialized record list;

determining whether the designated word is in the dictionary as a head word;

when it is determined that the designated word is in the dictionary as a head word,

adding the record identified by the designated word to the record list;

if the dictionary is fully specified with respect to morphological forms or fully specified with respect to homographic forms, indicating that the record list contains the information;

when it is determined that the designated word is not in the dictionary as a head word, if the dictionary is fully specified with respect to morphological forms, indicating that the record list contains the information;

applying morphological rules to produce a morphologically related word;

when the applying of morphological rules produces a morphologically related word, designating the related word as the designated word and repeating the determining with the newly designated word; and

when the applying of morphological rules does not produce a morphologically related word, indicating that the record list contains the information.

2. The method of claim 1 including normalizing the designated word.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the normalizing is with respect to diacritical marks.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the normalizing is with respect to capitalization.

5. A method in a computer system for identifying information in an electronic dictionary related to an input word, the electronic dictionary having records, each record being identified by a head word, the method comprising:

when the dictionary is fully specified with respect to morphological forms or fully specified with respect to homographic forms, indicating that any record with the input word as its head word is the information related to the input word; and

when the dictionary is not fully specified with respect to homographic forms, applying morphological rules to produce related words and indicating that any record with a related word as its head word is information related to the input word.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein additional related words are produced by applying morphological rules to the related words.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein the input word is normalized with respect to capitalization.

8. The method of claim 5 wherein the input word is normalized with respect to diacritical marks.

9. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for causing a computer system to identify information in an electronic dictionary related to an input word, the electronic dictionary having records, each record being identified by a head word, by:

when the electronic dictionary is fully specified as to morphological forms,

when the input word is in the electronic dictionary as a head word, indicating that the record identified by the input word is the information; and

when the input word is not in the electronic dictionary as a head word, indicating that information relating to the input word is not in the electronic dictionary; and

when the electronic dictionary is fully specified as to homographic forms,

when the input word is in the electronic dictionary as a head word, indicating that the record the input word is the information; and

when the input word is not in the electronic dictionary as a head word, identifying words morphologically related to the input word and when an identified morphologically related word is in the electronic dictionary as a head word, indicating that the record identified by the identified word is information relating to the input word.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the input word is normalized with respect to diacritical marks.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the input word is normalized with respect to capitalization.