System for improving the performance of information retrieval-type tasks by identifying the relations of constituents

• US 20050043936A1
• Filed: 10/04/2004
• Published: 02/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/18/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Suzuki, Hisami, Corston-Oliver, Simon H., Dolan, William B.
• Granted Patent: US 7,269,594 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/4
• CPC Class Codes: B42D 15/00 Printed matter of special format or style not otherwise provided for
• CPC Class Codes: B42D 15/0053 Forms specially designed for commercial use, e.g. bills, receipts, offer or order sheets, coupons
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/917 Text
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/954 Relational
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/956 Hierarchical
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A system is utilized for determining a relationship between first and second textual inputs. The system identifies constituents in the first textual input, having predetermined characteristics indicative of usefulness in determining the relationship. The relationship is then determined based on the constituents identified. The constituents can be eliminated from the first textual input, weighted in the first textual input, or simply annotated in one of a variety of ways.

Claims

1-35. -35. canceled

36. A computer readable medium storing an index of textual material used for determining a relationship between first and second textual inputs, the index comprising a data structure including:

a plurality of constituents from the textual material, the plurality of constituents having a predetermined usefulness in determining the relationship based on case information corresponding to the constituents in the textual material, or relations of constituents in the textual material.

37. The computer readable medium of claim 36 wherein the predetermined usefulness corresponds to a location of the case information corresponding to each of the plurality of constituents on a predetermined hierarchy.

63. The computer readable medium of claim 36 wherein the textual material includes a plurality of sentences, and wherein the index comprises:

a portion of a syntactic structure corresponding to each of the plurality of sentences, each syntactic structure being indicative of the grammatical relations of constituents in the corresponding sentences.

64. The computer readable medium of claim 36 wherein the predetermined usefulness corresponds to a location of grammatical relations corresponding to each of the plurality of constituents on a predetermined hierarchy.

38. A computer readable medium storing an index of textual material used for determining a relationship between first and second textual inputs, the index comprising a data structure including:

a plurality of constituents from the textual material, the plurality of constituents having predetermined characteristics indicative of usefulness in determining the relationship and being annotated with annotations indicative of the usefulness.

39. The computer readable medium of claim 38 wherein the constituents are annotated with a binary annotation indicating whether the constituents have corresponding grammatical relations located above a hierarchy threshold on a predetermined grammatical relation hierarchy.

40. The computer readable medium of claim 38 wherein the constituents are annotated with a weight value indicative of the usefulness of the constituents in determining the relationship.

41-43. -43. canceled

44. A method of generating an index corresponding to a first textual corpus, the index for use in determining a relationship between the first textual input and a second textual input, the method comprising:

identifying first constituents in the first textual input having relations indicative of usefulness in determining the relationship; and

generating the index based on the constituents identified.

45-62. -62. canceled