Relational text index creation and searching

• US 6,728,707 B1
• Filed: 08/10/2001
• Issued: 04/27/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Attensity Corporation (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Attensity Corporation (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Inventors: Bean, David L., Wakefield, Todd D., Lorenzen, Jeffrey A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Mizrahi, Diane D.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wu, Yicun
• Application Number:
  US09/927,579
• Time in Patent Office: 991 Days
• Field of Search: 707/1, 707/10, 707/101, 704/1, 704/4, 704/8, 704/9, 704/10, 345/708, 345/853, 700/104, 700/90, 341/51, 706/11, 703/6, 703/2
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/316 Indexing structures
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

In an environment where it is desire to perform information extraction over a large quantity of textual data, methods, tools and structures are provided for building a relational text index from the textual data and performing searches using the relational text index.

Claims

1. Computer readable storage media having a relational text index for use in searching a corpus of text documents on a computer system, the computer system including an input device, an output device, dynamic memory and a processor, the relational text index including:

noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectival phrases, and clauses from parsed sentences in the corpus of text documents,

caseframe extractions applied to said parsed sentences,

thematic role extractions corresponding to of caseframe extractions, said thematic role extractions including actors, actions and objects, location information for sentences and documents corresponding to thematic role extractions;

wherein said thematic role extractions include generic thematic roles; and

wherein said generic thematic roles are selected from the group consisting of actors, actions, objects, experiencers and specifier.

2. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 wherein said thematic roles role extractions include conceptual thematic roles.

3. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising diagrammed natural language sentences.

4. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising information concerning grammatical parts of each sentence.

5. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising references to where original text occurred in a document.

6. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising byte offsets indicating where original text occurred in a document.

7. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising raw forms corresponding to caseframe extractions.

8. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising morphological root forms corresponding to caseframe extractions.

10. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising full specifier phrases for at least some specifiers in the relational text index.

11. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising caseframe triggers.

12. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 1 further comprising predefined meta types for at least some thematic roles for verbs.

9. Computer readable storage media having a relational text index for use in searching a corpus of text documents on a computer system, the computer system including an input device, an output device, dynamic memory and a processor, the relational text index including:

noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectival phrases, and clauses from parsed sentences in the corpus of text documents,

caseframe extractions applied to said parsed sentences,

thematic role extractions corresponding to of caseframe extractions, said thematic role extractions including actors, actions and objects, location information for sentences,

documents corresponding to thematic role extractions, and

a search tool for searching a relational text index, that includes

a tool for accepting a search query from a user, said search query including actor and action roles, and

a tool for querying said relational text index for instances when said actor or action is recorded in its appropriate role, for each query match, said tool being capable of retrieving the noun phrase of the extracted term, and for each query match, said tool being capable of retrieving the document and phrase where the match occurred.

13. Computer readable storage media having a relational text index for use in searching a corpus of text documents on a computer system, the computer system including an input device, an output device, dynamic memory and a processor, the relational text index including:

noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectival phrases and clauses from parsed sentences of the corpus of text documents,

caseframe extractions corresponding to said parsed sentences, and

thematic role assignments corresponding to said caseframe extraction, and

file information for locating documents corresponding to information located in the relational text index;

wherein at least some of said thematic role assignments are selected from the group consisting of action, action, object, and specifier.

14. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 13 further comprising morphological root forms for actors, actions and objects.

15. Computer readable storage media as recited in claim 13 further comprising semantic hierarchy information, semantic category information, generic thematic role information, and specifier thematic role information.