Abstract:
The present invention provides a method for providing linguistically interesting terms to a user, the method comprising processing a received digital text by a natural language processing technology, and then comparing the processed digital text with a linguistically interesting term database with a plurality of predetermined linguistically interesting terms. When the processed digital text has at least one predetermined linguistically interesting term, then at least one predetermined linguistically interesting term is extracted and is identified in a display.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    The present invention relates to machine aided language learning and writing systems and methods. In particular, the present invention relates to systems and methods for aiding users in learning foreign or second languages. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    With the rapid development of global communications, the ability to write in a foreign or second language, especially the ability to write in English. However, those for whom English is a second or foreign language (for example, people who speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other non-English languages) often find it very difficult to write in English. The difficulty is frequently not in spelling, nor in grammar, but in idiomatic usage. Therefore, the biggest problem for these second or foreign language users while writing in English is determining how to polish sentences. 
         [0003]    Spelling check and grammar check are helpful only when the user misspells a word or makes an obvious grammar mistake. These checking programs cannot be depended on for help in polishing sentences. A dictionary can be helpful as well, but mostly only for resolving reading and translation issues. Normally, looking up a word in a dictionary provides the writer with multiple explanations about the usages of the word, but without contextual information. As a result, it&#39;s too confusing and time-consuming for users to get any solution. 
         [0004]    Generally, writers find it is very helpful to have good sample sentences that include idioms while writing for reference in polishing sentences. In light of these problems, a system and method, which aid second or foreign language users to notice and assimilate the idiomatic usage of sentences, is required. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0005]    The main purpose of the present invention is to help a user to learn a second or foreign language when browsing a digital text. 
         [0006]    Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for detecting for a user salient linguistic features or idiomatic expressions of the language that are potentially worthy of the user&#39;s attention (hereafter referred to as “linguistically interesting terms”), the method comprising to process a received digital text by a natural language processing technology, and then to compare the processed digital text with a database of linguistically interesting terms containing a plurality of predetermined linguistically interesting terms. When the processed digital text has at least one predetermined linguistically interesting term, the predetermined linguistically interesting term is extracted and is identified in a display. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0007]    The foregoing aspects and many of the attendant advantages of this invention are more readily appreciated and better understood by referencing the following detailed description, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein: 
           [0008]      FIG. 1  is a simplified block diagram of a linguistic retrieval system of the present invention. 
           [0009]      FIG. 2  is a more detailed block diagram of the natural language processing engine according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. 
           [0010]      FIG. 3  shows an example of using the server&#39;s retrieval system of the present invention to aid a user to learn a language. 
           [0011]      FIG. 4  shows a flow chart related to the  FIG. 3 . 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
       [0012]    This application describes a computer system used for information retrieval that, through a sequence of computer and user interactions, allows the expression and the retrieval and display of relevant sentences using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. 
         [0013]    The term “linguistically interesting terms” should be taken to include salient linguistic features or idiomatic expressions of the language that are potentially worthy of the user&#39;s attention such as compound words, idioms, lexical chunks, and other multi-word expressions. 
         [0014]      FIG. 1  is a simplified block diagram of a linguistic retrieval system of the present invention. The invention is typically implemented in a client-server configuration including a server  20  with the idiom retrieval system  205  and numerous clients, one of which is shown at  25 . The server  20  receives queries from clients, does substantially all the processing necessary to respond to the queries, and provides these responses to the clients. 
         [0015]    The server  20  includes one or more processors  202  that communicate with a number of peripheral devices via a bus  204 . These peripheral devices typically include the retrieval system  205 , a set of user interface inputs and output devices  203 , and an interface to outside networks. This interface is shown schematically as a “Modems and Network Interface” block  201 , and is coupled to corresponding interface devices in client computers via a wire or a wireless network connection  30 . 
         [0016]    Client  25  has the same general configuration, including one or more processors  252  that communicate with a number of peripheral devices via a bus  256 . These peripheral devices typically include a storage subsystem  253 , a set of user interface input and output devices  254 , and modems and Network Interfaces  251 . The input and output devices  254  are, for example, keyboard, mouse and display and so on. 
         [0017]    The server&#39;s retrieval system  205  includes a natural language processing (NLP) engine  2051 , a matcher  2052  and a corpus  2053 . The corpus  2053  includes a plurality of linguistically interesting terms, such as idioms, lexical chunks or grammatical features, and has been established before a user enters queries into the retrieval system  205 . After a sentence has been processed by the NLP engine  2051 , the processed sentence is transferred to the matcher  2052  for further matching with the database stored in the corpus  2053 . During matching, the matcher may extract interesting terms from the corpus  2053 . 
         [0018]      FIG. 2  is a more detailed block diagram of the natural language processing engine  2051  according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. In this fig., the natural language processing engine  2051  includes sentence segmentation module  20511 , POS tagging module  20512 , lemmatizing module  20513 . In other embodiments, different natural language processing engines also can be used in the present invention. 
         [0019]    The first process to be performed in the natural language processing engine  2051  is to break text into sentences. A sentence segmentation module  20511  performs this process. Many Sentence segmentation methods can be used. The method currently widely used for segmenting a sentence is a regular grammar. In the simplest implementation of this method, the grammar rules attempt to end patterns of characters, such as period-space-capital letter, which usually occur at the end of a sentence. 
         [0020]    POS tagging module  20512  performs the process of Part-of-Speech tag for a certain token in a sentence. A part-of-speech tag is a lexical category. 
         [0021]    A lemma is the canonical form of a lexeme. Lemmatizing module  20513  performs the process of Lemmatisation is closely allied to the identification of parts-of-speech and involving the reduction of the words in a corpus to their respective lexemes. 
         [0022]    Chunking module  20514  performs the process of extracting interesting terms from sentence. 
         [0023]      FIG. 3  shows an example of using the server&#39;s retrieval system of the present invention to aid a user to learn a language, such as English, Chinese, French and so on.  FIG. 4  shows a flow chart related to the  FIG. 3 .  FIG. 3  only shows the retrieval system  205  of the server  20 . Please refer to  FIG. 3  and  FIG. 4  together. In the following embodiment, a web page is analyzed to describe the application of the present invention. It is noticed that present invention can be used to analyze any digital text. 
         [0024]    According to an embodiment, a client  25  browses a web page through the Internet  40  in step  401 . Typically, when a user browsing a web page finds an interesting term that he/she doesn&#39;t understand, he needs to input the terms into the search on-line or off-line dictionary to find its meaning. However, in this present invention, the client  25  may transfer all the content of the web page to the server  20  through the Internet  40  in step  402 . The server  20  can help the client  25  to find all linguistically interesting terms in this web page. According to the present invention, the linguistically interesting terms are highlighted to inform the client  25 . Therefore, when the client  25  browses the web page, he may learn the formulatic expressions, collocations, grammatical constructions and patterns of word usage. 
         [0025]    The operation of the server  20  is described in the following. When server  20  receives this web page, the web page is preprocessed by the NLP engine  2051  in server  20 . This process of preprocessing the web page is described in step  404  to step  406 . According to the preferred embodiment, the web page is sent to the Sentence segmentation module  20511  to break the text into sentences in step  404 . Next, these sentences are sent to the POS tagging module  20512  to arrange certain tokens in these sentences in step  405 . Finally,every word in these sentences is reduced to their respective lexemes by Lemmatizing the module  20513  in step  406 . In other embodiments, other NLP technologies can also be used in the present invention. 
         [0026]    After the web page is preprocessed, the matcher  2052  may search the web page to find whether or not there are any linguistically interesting terms, such as idioms, therein in step  408 . According to the present invention, the interesting terms search performed by the matcher  2052  is based on the database stored in the corpus  2053 . In other words, the matcher  2053  compares the preprocessed web page with the corpus  2053  to extract linguistically interesting terms from the corpus  2053 . These linguistically interesting terms are sent back to the client  25  in step  409 . Finally, in step  410 , the linguistic retrieval system provides the functions to help the client  25  identify these extracted linguistically interesting terms. For example, when the user browses the web page, the linguistically interesting terms are highlighted in the display and related explanation is also shown in the display to inform the client  25 . 
         [0027]    On the other hand, in a preferred embodiment, the extracted linguistically interesting terms along with additional examples, such as the relevant sentence, can be stored in the storage subsystem  253  as shown in the  FIG. 1  for future reference. In another embodiment, the behavior of the client  25  browsing the web page and searching the linguistically interesting terms can be recorded in the storage subsystem  253 . This record can be used to track the user&#39;s interesting field and related linguistic features. 
         [0028]    As is understood by a person skilled in the art, the foregoing descriptions of the preferred embodiment of the present invention are an illustration of the present invention rather than a limitation thereof. Various modifications and similar arrangements are included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. The scope of the claims should be accorded to the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar structures. While a preferred embodiment of the invention has been illustrated and described, it will be appreciated that various changes can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.