Patent ID: 7058564
Filing Date: 2006-06-06
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method of automatically finding one or more answers to a natural language question in a computer stored natural language text database, wherein said natural language text database has been analyzed with respect to clause boundaries, constituents, syntactic functions of the constituents, word tokens of the constituents, and lemmas of the word tokens, and wherein said natural language question comprises a question clause having an interrogative pronoun, comprising the steps of: analyzing a computer readable representation of said question clause with respect to constituents, syntactic functions of the constituents, word tokens of the constituents, and lemmas of the word tokens; identifying the interrogative pronoun in said computer readable representation of said question clause; determining a syntactic function of interest based on the analyzing step and the identified interrogative pronoun; identifying a constituent having the determined syntactic function in the question clause; selecting a word token being a lexical head of the identified constituent in the question clause; defining a set of conditions comprising a condition stipulating that, for a clause in said natural language text database to constitute an answer to said question clause, the clause comprises a word token having the same lemma as the selected word token of the question clause and being comprised in a constituent having the same syntactic function as the identified constituent of said question clause; identifying clauses in said natural language text database that satisfy said conditions; and returning answers to said question clause by means of the identified clauses that satisfy said conditions.