Patent ID: 7113905

Claim:
A method of identifying non-local linguistic relationships between elements of a text, the method comprising: identifying a segment of the text during syntactic parsing of the text; identifying a token outside of the segment during syntactic parsing of the text; based on properties of the token and properties of the segment, determining that the token may have a non-local linguistic relationship to a licensing element in the segment during syntactic parsing of the text, wherein determining that the token may have a non-local linguistic relationship to a licensing element comprises identifying a syntactic rule for combining the segment and the token; searching the segment for a licensing element in the segment that is capable of being in a non-local linguistic relationship with the token during syntactic parsing of the text, wherein searching is limited to the segment; generating a record for a syntactic attribute list associated with the syntactic parse, the record indicating that the token may have a non-local linguistic relationship to a licensing element in the segment, wherein the attribute list is a hierarchical list that has a hierarchy based in part on a hierarchy of clauses in the text; finding at least one licensing element in the segment that is capable of being in a non-local linguistic relationship with the token and adding the location of the licensing element to the attribute list; and constructing a logical form based in part on the attribute list.