Patent ID: 8229734
Filing Date: 2012-07-24
Classification: G06F,G09B,G10L,H04M

Abstract:
1. A method of performing semantic decoding of a user question presented in a speech utterance to a networked online natural language processing system to determine a meaning of the user question, the method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving a set of words forming the user question at the networked online natural language processing system; wherein the user question can be associated with one or more known queries, and which known queries have a meaning that is understood by the networked online natural language processing system; (b) determining a frequency of occurrence of one or more terms identified in the user question and in each of said one or more known queries; (c) determining a percentage of terms which appear in the user question that also appear in each of said one or more known queries, including calculating a semantic similarity W between the user question (UQ) and each of said one or more known queries using a semantic dictionary, and computing a semantic distance between UQ (q) and a known query (d) as follows: where I(uq,r) and I(r,uq) are values corresponding to the inverse semantic distances computed at a given sense and level of the semantic dictionary in both directions, and T is a term frequency metric; (d) measuring a semantic similarity between said set of words in the user question, and a corresponding set of words in each of said one or more known queries; (e) combining the results of steps (b) through (d) to identify which one of said one or more known queries is to be used in identifying the meaning of the user question.