Semantic pre-processing of natural language input in a virtual personal assistant
First Claim
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1. A method for a computing device to pre-process natural language speech captured by an audio input device to improve accuracy of a parser, the method comprising:
- with syntactic parser computer instructions, identifying a plurality of syntactic units in an instance of natural language input;
with unit-level semantic parser computer instructions, outputting unit-level semantic interpretations each comprising a canonical representation of a particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units and a data value associated with the canonical representation of the particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units;
with sentence-level semantic parser computer instructions, determining one of the plurality of unit-level semantic interpretations output by the unit-level semantic parser computer instructions to include in a sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input;
with reasoner computer instructions, using the sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input to determine an action to be executed by the computing device;
causing the computing device to execute the action.
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Abstract
A computing system is operable as a virtual personal assistant (VPA). Among other things, a semantic preprocessor of the VPA recognizes natural language user input that is intended as a reference to a known semantic type, and creates a semantic interpretation of the natural language input. The semantic interpretation may be used by a natural language understanding module of the VPA.
47 Citations
42 Claims
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1. A method for a computing device to pre-process natural language speech captured by an audio input device to improve accuracy of a parser, the method comprising:
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with syntactic parser computer instructions, identifying a plurality of syntactic units in an instance of natural language input; with unit-level semantic parser computer instructions, outputting unit-level semantic interpretations each comprising a canonical representation of a particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units and a data value associated with the canonical representation of the particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units; with sentence-level semantic parser computer instructions, determining one of the plurality of unit-level semantic interpretations output by the unit-level semantic parser computer instructions to include in a sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input; with reasoner computer instructions, using the sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input to determine an action to be executed by the computing device; causing the computing device to execute the action. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A system for enabling a computing device to pre-process natural language speech captured by an audio input device to improve accuracy of a parser, the method comprising:
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with syntactic parser computer instructions, identifying a plurality of syntactic units in an instance of natural language input; with unit-level semantic parser computer instructions, outputting unit-level semantic interpretations each comprising a canonical representation of a particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units and a data value associated with the canonical representation of the particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units; with sentence-level semantic parser computer instructions, determining one of the plurality of unit-level semantic interpretations output by the unit-level semantic parser computer instructions to include in a sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input; with reasoner computer instructions, using the sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input to determine an action to be executed by the computing device; causing the computing device to execute the action. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28)
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29. A computer program product for enabling a computing device to pre-process natural language speech captured by an audio input device to improve accuracy of a parser, the computer program product comprising one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
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with syntactic parser computer instructions, identifying a plurality of syntactic units in an instance of natural language input; with unit-level semantic parser computer instructions, outputting unit-level semantic interpretations each comprising a canonical representation of a particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units and a data value associated with the canonical representation of the particular subset of the plurality of syntactic units; with sentence-level semantic parser computer instructions, determining one of the plurality of unit-level semantic interpretations output by the unit-level semantic parser computer instructions to include in a sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input; with reasoner computer instructions, using the sentence-level semantic interpretation of the instance of natural language input to determine an action to be executed by the computing device; causing the computing device to execute the action. - View Dependent Claims (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42)
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Specification