Situation Aware NLU/NLP

• US 20140095147A1
• Filed: 10/01/2012
• Published: 04/03/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/01/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Hebert, Matthieu, Robichaud, Jean-Philippe, Parisien, Christopher
• Granted Patent: US 9,619,459 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90332 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/40 Processing or translation of natural language natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30

Abstract

An arrangement and corresponding method are described for natural language processing. A natural language understanding (NLU) arrangement processes a natural language input to determine a corresponding sentence-level interpretation. A user state component maintains user context data that characterizes an operating context of the NLU arrangement. Operation of the NLU arrangement is biased by the user context data.

Claims

1. An arrangement for natural language processing comprising:

a natural language understanding (NLU) arrangement for processing a natural language input to determine a corresponding sentence-level interpretation; and

a user state component for maintaining user context data that characterizes an operating context of the NLU arrangement;

wherein operation of the NLU arrangement is biased by the user context data.

2. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein the NLU arrangement uses semantic templates for processing the natural language input.

3. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein the NLU arrangement uses a mention detection approach for processing the natural language input.

4. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input using a plurality of parallel domain pipelines, each domain pipeline representing a different specific subject domain of related concepts.

5. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein the NLU arrangement uses both rule-based NLU and statistical-based NLU for processing the natural language input.

6. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein a mobile device develops the natural language input.

7. An arrangement according to claim 1, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input with minimum response latency.

8. A method for natural language processing comprising:

processing a natural language input with a natural language understanding (NLU) arrangement including a user state component for maintaining user context data that characterizes an operating context of the NLU arrangement; and

biasing operation of the NLU arrangement based on the user context data to determine a corresponding sentence-level interpretation for the natural language input.

9. A method according to claim 8, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input based on use of semantic templates.

10. A method according to claim 8, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input using a mention detection approach

11. A method according to claim 8, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input using a plurality of parallel domain pipelines, each domain pipeline representing a different specific subject domain of related concepts.

12. A method according to claim 8, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input using both rule-based NLU and statistical-based NLU.

13. A method according to claim 8, wherein the natural language input is developed by a mobile device.

14. A method according to claim 8, wherein the NLU arrangement processes the natural language input with minimum response latency.