Natural language processing utilizing transaction based knowledge representation

• US 9,715,488 B2
• Filed: 10/06/2014
• Issued: 07/25/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/06/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Smythe, Jared M. D., Bruno, Nicholas V., Woods, Eric
• Primary Examiner(s): Riley, Marcus T
• Application Number:
  US14/506,898
• Publication Number:
  US 20160098389A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,023 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing

Abstract

Mechanisms are provided for processing logical relationships in natural language content. A logical parse of a first parse of the natural language content is generated by identifying latent logical terms within the first parse indicative of logical relationships between elements of the natural language content. The logical parse comprises nodes and edges linking nodes. At least one knowledge value is associated with each node in the logical parse. The at least one knowledge value associated with at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse is propagated to one or more other nodes in the logical parse based on propagation rules. The propagating of the at least one knowledge value generates transaction records in a transaction knowledgebase data structure. A reasoning operation is executed based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to;

generate a logical parse hierarchical representation of a first parse of the natural language content by identifying latent logical terms within the first parse indicative of logical relationships between elements of the natural language content, wherein the logical parse hierarchical representation comprises nodes and edges linking nodes;

associate at least one knowledge value with each node in the logical parse hierarchical representation;

propagate the at least one knowledge value associated with at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein the propagating of the at least one knowledge value generates transaction records in a transaction knowledgebase data structure; and

perform a reasoning operation based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure, wherein the at least one knowledge value associated with each node in the logical parse hierarchical representation comprises a knowledge tuple having one or more supporting evidence measure knowledge values and a relevance knowledge value.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to propagate the at least one knowledge value at least by iteratively applying one or more knowledge reasoners to the logical parse hierarchical representation to propagate the at least one knowledge value of at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein each application of a knowledge reasoner generates a transaction record in the transaction knowledgebase data structure identifying nodes affected by the application of the knowledge reasoner.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the one or more knowledge reasoners comprises at least one of an evidential support reasoner, a relevance reasoner, or a co-reference knowledge reasoner.

4. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the one or more knowledge reasoners are iteratively applied until no further logical deductions are able to be made by further application of the one or more knowledge reasoners.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein no further logical deductions being able to be made is detected by the detection of an empty transaction being generated in response to the one or more knowledge reasoners being applied.

6. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein each transaction record is generated by exactly one invocation of a knowledge reasoner and stores data representing knowledge contributions from the one invocation of the knowledge reasoner.

7. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein each transaction record stores identifiers of nodes in the hierarchical representation affected by application of a corresponding knowledge reasoner and knowledge value states of the nodes corresponding to the identifiers of nodes in the transaction record.

8. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to;

generate a logical parse hierarchical representation of a first parse of the natural language content by identifying latent logical terms within the first parse indicative of logical relationships between elements of the natural language content, wherein the logical parse hierarchical representation comprises nodes and edges linking nodes;

associate at least one knowledge value with each node in the logical parse hierarchical representation;

propagate the at least one knowledge value associated with at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein the propagating of the at least one knowledge value generates transaction records in a transaction knowledgebase data structure; and

perform a reasoning operation based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to perform a reasoning operation based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure at least by determining a current state of a node in the hierarchical representation by retrieving a most recent transaction that affected the node from the transaction knowledgebase data structure.

10. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to propagate the at least one knowledge value at least by iteratively applying one or more knowledge reasoners to the logical parse hierarchical representation to propagate the at least one knowledge value of at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein each application of a knowledge reasoner generates a transaction record in the transaction knowledgebase data structure identifying nodes affected by the application of the knowledge reasoner.

11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the one or more knowledge reasoners comprises at least one of evidential support reasoner, a relevance reasoner, or a co-reference knowledge reasoner.

12. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the one or more knowledge reasoners are iteratively applied until no further logical deductions are able to be made by further application of the one or more knowledge reasoners.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein no further logical deductions being able to be made is detected by the detection of an empty transaction being generated in response to the one or more knowledge reasoners being applied.

14. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein each transaction record is generated by exactly one invocation of knowledge reasoner and stores data representing knowledge contributions from the one invocation of the knowledge reasoner.

15. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein each transaction record stores identifiers of nodes in the hierarchical representation affected by application of a corresponding knowledge reasoner and knowledge value states of the nodes corresponding to the identifiers of nodes in the transaction record.

9. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to;

generate a logical parse hierarchical representation of a first parse of the natural language content by identifying latent logical terms within the first parse indicative of logical relationships between elements of the natural language content, wherein the logical parse hierarchical representation comprises nodes and edges linking nodes;

associate at least one knowledge value with each node in the logical parse hierarchical representation;

propagate the at least one knowledge value associated with at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein the propagating of the at least one knowledge value generates transaction records in a transaction knowledgebase data structure; and

perform a reasoning operation based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to perform a reasoning operation based on the transaction knowledgebase data structure at least by analyzing the transaction knowledgebase data structure to identify individual contributions to the transaction knowledgebase data structure by a specific knowledge reasoner based on the transaction records stored in the transaction knowledgebase data structure.

16. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to propagate the at least one knowledge value at least by iteratively applying one or more knowledge reasoners to the logical parse hierarchical representation to propagate the at least one knowledge value of at least a subset of the nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation to one or more other nodes in the logical parse hierarchical representation based on propagation rules, wherein each application of a knowledge reasoner generates a transaction record in the transaction knowledgebase data structure identifying node affected by the application of the knowledge reasoner.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the one or more knowledge reasoners are iteratively applied until no further logical deductions are able to be made by further application of the one or ore knowledge reasoners.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein no further logical deductions being able to be made is detected by the detection of an empty transaction being generated in response to the one or mo knowledge reasoners being applied.

19. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein each transaction record is generated by exactly one invocation of knowledge reasoner and stores data representing knowledge contributions from the on invocation of the knowledge reasoner.

20. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein each transaction record stores identifiers of nodes in the hierarchical representation affected by application of a corresponding knowledge reasoner and knowledge value states of the nodes corresponding to the identifiers of nodes in the transaction record.