Automatic, unsupervised paraphrase detection

• US 10,275,452 B2
• Filed: 05/12/2017
• Issued: 04/30/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 05/12/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bennett, Laura J., Krishnamurthy, Lakshminarayanan, Parameswaran, Niyati, Sudarsan, Sridhar
• Primary Examiner(s): Singh, Satwant K
• Application Number:
  US15/594,057
• Publication Number:
  US 20180329881A1
• Time in Patent Office: 718 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/243 Natural language query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/20 Natural language analysis semantic analysis of natural language G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/041 Abduction

Abstract

A system, method, and computer-readable medium are disclosed for identifying paraphrases in a natural language processing (NLP) system comprising: receiving a first phrase and a second phrase by a system; analyzing the first phrase and the second phrase to provide a semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment, the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment having an associated semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value; and determining whether the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds a predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria; and, responsive to determining the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds the predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria, classifying the second phrase as being a rewording of the first phrase.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a processor;

a data bus coupled to the processor; and

a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured for;

receiving a first phrase and a second phrase by a system;

analyzing the first phrase and the second phrase to provide a semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment, the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment having an associated semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value; and

determining whether the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds a predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria;

responsive to determining the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds the predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria, classifying the second phrase as being a rewording of the first phrase.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the structural hierarchical comparison assessment includes a vector based and a semantic based framework.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein:

the first phrase and the second phrase are in a single language.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the computer executable instructions are further configured for:

utilizing the first phrase and the second phrase in a ground truth classifier for a system capable of answering questions.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment comprises performing an ensemble operation on the first phrase and the second phrase, the ensemble operation providing a structural similarity score.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment comprises performing a semantic similarity operation, the semantic similarity operation providing a semantic similarity score.

7. A non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the computer program code comprising computer executable instructions configured for:

receiving a first phrase and a second phrase by a system;

analyzing the first phrase and the second phrase to provide a semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment, the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment having an associated semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value; and

determining whether the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds a predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria;

responsive to determining the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment value exceeds the predetermined paraphrase equivalency criteria, classifying the second phrase as being a rewording of the first phrase.

8. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein:

the structural hierarchical comparison assessment includes a vector based and a semantic based framework.

9. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein:

the first phrase and the second phrase are in a single language.

10. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the computer executable instructions are further configured for:

utilizing the first phrase and the second phrase in a ground truth classifier for a system capable of answering questions.

11. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein:

the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment comprises performing an ensemble operation on the first phrase and the second phrase, the ensemble operation providing a structural similarity score.

12. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein:

the semantic and structural hierarchical comparison assessment comprises performing a semantic similarity operation, the semantic similarity operation providing a semantic similarity score.

13. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the computer executable instructions are deployable to a client system from a server system at a remote location.

14. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the computer executable instructions are provided by a service provider to a user on an on-demand basis.