A predicate template collecting device for collecting predicate templates from a prescribed set of sentences; wherein a predicate template is coupled to a noun to form a phrase; an excitation value indicative of orientation and magnitude of excitation can be assigned to a predicate template in accordance with a classification of excitatory, inhibitory and neutral; excitatory indicates a description of an event in an orientation to stimulate a function or effect of an object indicated by a noun coupled to the predicate template, inhibitory indicates a description of an event in an orientation not to stimulate a function or effect of an object indicated by a noun coupled to the predicate template, and neutral indicates that the predicate template is neither an excitatory nor inhibitory predicate template; a sign of the excitation value of the predicate template is referred to as a polarity; said predicate template collecting device comprising: a conjunction storage for storing conjunctions classified to and/thus type or but type conjunctions; and a seed template storage for storing seed templates serving as seeds for building a template network; wherein the polarity and the excitation value has been assigned to each of said seed templates; said predicate template collecting device further comprising: noun pair collecting means for collecting noun pairs from a prescribed corpus using predicate template pairs generated from the conjunctions stored in the conjunction storage and the seed templates stored in the seed template storage, and classifying polarity of relation between nouns forming each noun pair to positive or negative; wherein the polarity of relation between nouns forming each noun pair is defined as positive if an object represented by one of the pair of nouns promotes occurrence of an object represented by the other, and defined as negative if it prevents the occurrence; said predicate template collecting device further comprising: predicate template pair collecting means for collecting, from a prescribed corpus, predicate template pairs each co-occurring with each noun pair collected by said noun pair collecting means, and determining, for each of the collected predicate template pairs, whether the templates belong to the same excitatory/inhibitory class or to the opposite classes, based on the polarity of relation of the noun pair co-occurring with the predicate template pair and the conjunction coupling the predicate template pair; means for building a template network, by linking the predicate templates using the predicate template pairs collected by said predicate template pair collecting means and the results of determination as to whether the templates of each pair belong to the same excitatory/inhibitory class or to the opposite classes, each node of said template network being a predicate template and a link of said network being a relation between predicate templates forming each predicate template pair; and excitation value calculating means for calculating, based on said excitation values assigned in advance to nodes corresponding to the seed templates in said template network, using the relation between nodes in said template network, an excitation value to be assigned to each node and assigning and outputting the calculated excitation value to the predicate template corresponding to each node. a conjunction storage for storing conjunctions classified to and/thus type or but type conjunctions; and a seed template storage for storing seed templates serving as seeds for building a template network; wherein the polarity and the excitation value has been assigned to each of said seed templates; noun pair collecting means for collecting noun pairs from a prescribed corpus using predicate template pairs generated from the conjunctions stored in the conjunction storage and the seed templates stored in the seed template storage, and classifying polarity of relation between nouns forming each noun pair to positive or negative; wherein the polarity of relation between nouns forming each noun pair is defined as positive if an object represented by one of the pair of nouns promotes occurrence of an object represented by the other, and defined as negative if it prevents the occurrence; predicate template pair collecting means for collecting, from a prescribed corpus, predicate template pairs each co-occurring with each noun pair collected by said noun pair collecting means, and determining, for each of the collected predicate template pairs, whether the templates belong to the same excitatory/inhibitory class or to the opposite classes, based on the polarity of relation of the noun pair co-occurring with the predicate template pair and the conjunction coupling the predicate template pair; means for building a template network, by linking the predicate templates using the predicate template pairs collected by said predicate template pair collecting means and the results of determination as to whether the templates of each pair belong to the same excitatory/inhibitory class or to the opposite classes, each node of said template network being a predicate template and a link of said network being a relation between predicate templates forming each predicate template pair; and excitation value calculating means for calculating, based on said excitation values assigned in advance to nodes corresponding to the seed templates in said template network, using the relation between nodes in said template network, an excitation value to be assigned to each node and assigning and outputting the calculated excitation value to the predicate template corresponding to each node.