Patent ID: 7386441

Claim:
In a system for processing natural language, a method for intersecting a first selected tape and a second selected tape of a selected path of a multi-tape automaton (MTA) having a plurality of n tapes and a plurality of paths, comprising: (a) generating a string tuple <s 1 , . . . , s n > having a string s for each of the n tapes of the selected path of the MTA; (b) comparing the string s j of the first selected tape with the string s k of the second selected tape in the string tuple generated at (a); (c) if the strings s j and s k equal at (b), retaining the string tuple in the MTA; (d) if the strings s j and s k do not equal at (b), restructuring the MTA to remove the string tuple while retaining other paths in the MTA; (e) repeating (a)-(d) for at least another path of the MTA by specifying the one or more paths in turn as the selected path; (f) outputting the MTA restructured at (d) in which all paths in the MTA are removed except for those having equal strings on the first selected tape and the second selected tape of the string tuples generated at (a).