Method and system for semantic searching using syntactic and semantic analysis

• US 9,075,864 B2
• Filed: 12/31/2010
• Issued: 07/07/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: ABBYY Production LLC (ABBYY Software)
• Original Assignee: ABBYY InfoPoisk LLC
• Inventors: Zuev, Konstantin
• Primary Examiner(s): ROBERTS, SHAUN A
• Application Number:
  US12/983,220
• Publication Number:
  US 20120010872A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,649 Days
• Field of Search: 704 9- 10, 707/705, 707/708, 707/711, 707/713, 707/736, 707/739, 707/742
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/31 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/268 Morphological analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis

Abstract

In one embodiment, there is provided a computer-implemented method and system for implementing the method. The method comprises: preliminarily analyzing at least one corpus of natural language text comprising for each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus, performing syntactic analysis using linguistic descriptions to generate at least one syntactic structure for the sentence; building a semantic structure for the sentence; associating each generated syntactic and semantic structure with the sentence; and saving each generated syntactic and semantic structure; for each corpus of natural language text that was preliminarily analyzed, performing an indexing operation to index lexical meanings and values of linguistic parameters of each syntactic structure and each semantic structure associated with sentences in the corpus; and searching in at least one preliminarily analyzed corpora for sentences comprising searched values for the linguistic parameters.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

preliminarily analyzing at least one corpus of natural language text comprising for each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus

performing syntactic analysis using linguistic descriptions to generate at least one syntactic structure for the sentence, by

performing a rough syntactic analysis on each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus to generate a graph of generalized constituents for each sentence,

performing a precise syntactic analysis on the graph of generalized constituents to generate one or more syntactic trees to represent a corresponding sentence of a corresponding natural language text of the corpus, and

selecting a best syntactic tree from the generated one or more syntactic trees to represent the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence; and

building from the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence a language-independent semantic structure for the sentence thereby associating each generated syntactic structure and language-independent semantic structure with the sentence, wherein the semantic structure comprises semantic classes, semantemes, and deep slots; and

performing additionally for each corpus preliminarily analyzed, an indexing operation to index lexical meanings and values of linguistic parameters of each syntactic structure and each language-independent semantic structure associated with sentences of the corpus.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising searching in response to a semantic search query.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, where the semantic search query includes at least one lexical meaning.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, where the semantic search query includes at least one value of the linguistic parameters where the linguistic parameters are selected from the group of descriptions consisting of semantic descriptions, syntactic descriptions, lexical descriptions, and morphological descriptions.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising searching in response to a query in a natural language.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising displaying results of said searching to a user.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, further comprising displaying each semantic and syntactic structure associated with found sentences to the user.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising searching in at least one preliminarily analyzed corpus for sentences comprising searched values for the linguistic parameters.

9. A system, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions which when executed by the processor cause system to perform a method, comprising

preliminarily analyzing at least one corpus of natural language text comprising for each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus

performing syntactic analysis using linguistic descriptions to generate at least one syntactic structure for the sentence, by

performing a rough syntactic analysis on each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus to generate a graph of generalized constituents for each sentence,

performing a precise syntactic analysis on the graph of generalized constituents to generate one or more syntactic trees to represent a corresponding sentence of a corresponding natural language text of the corpus, and

selecting a best syntactic tree from the generated one or more syntactic trees to represent the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence;

building from the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence a language-independent semantic structure for the sentence thereby associating each generated syntactic structure and language-independent semantic structure with the sentence, wherein the semantic structure comprises semantic classes, semantemes, and deep slots; and

performing additionally for each corpus preliminarily analyzed, an indexing operation to index lexical meanings and values of linguistic parameters of each syntactic structure and each language-independent semantic structure associated with sentences of the corpus.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises searching in response to a semantic search query.

11. The system of claim 10, where the semantic search query includes at least one lexical meaning.

12. The system of claim 10, where the semantic search query includes at least one value of the linguistic parameters where the linguistic parameters are selected from the group of descriptions consisting of semantic descriptions, syntactic descriptions, lexical descriptions, and morphological descriptions.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises searching in response to a query in a natural language.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises displaying results of said searching to a user.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the method further comprises displaying each semantic and syntactic structure associated with found sentences to the user.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the processor causes the system to further perform searching in at least one preliminarily analyzed corpus for sentences comprising searched values for the linguistic parameters.

17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method, comprising:

preliminarily analyzing at least one corpus of natural language text comprising for each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus

performing syntactic analysis using linguistic descriptions to generate at least one syntactic structure for the sentence, by

performing a rough syntactic analysis on each sentence of each natural language text of the corpus to generate a graph of generalized constituents for each sentence,

performing a precise syntactic analysis on the graph of generalized constituents to generate one or more syntactic trees to represent a corresponding sentence of a corresponding natural language text of the corpus, and

selecting a best syntactic tree from the generated one or more syntactic trees to represent the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence;

building from the at least one syntactic structure of the sentence a language-independent a language-independent semantic structure for the sentence thereby associating each generated syntactic structure and language-independent semantic structure with the sentence, wherein the semantic structure comprises semantic classes, semantemes, and deep slots; and

performing additionally for each corpus preliminarily analyzed an indexing operation to index lexical meanings and values of linguistic parameters of each syntactic structure and each language-independent semantic structure associated with sentences of the corpus.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the method further comprises searching in response to a semantic search query.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the method further comprises searching in at least one preliminarily analyzed corpus for sentences comprising searched values for the linguistic parameters.