Patent ID: 7233891

Claim:
A method for parsing consecutive sentences having a series of words and punctuation marks comprising: (a) identifying for each of the words in each successive sentence a token comprised of a list of syntactic identifiers corresponding to the word; (b) token merging consecutive tokens by matching consecutive tokens against a first list of rules to produce a narrower set of possible syntactic interpretations; (c) continuing step (b) until no further changes are determined for the syntactic identifiers; (d) identifying for each of the merged tokens, at least one of a functional role and a value content; (e) token merging the narrower set of possible interpretations by matching the narrower set of possible interpretations against a second list of rules to map the narrower set of possible interpretations into a parse for the sentence having a still narrower set of possible interpretations; and (f) reiterating steps b–d until no further token merging is possible; (g) using output from step (f) to provide context to a current sentence being analyzed in order to facilitate analysis of a subsequent consecutive sentence; (h) using the resulting narrower set of output from step (g) to facilitate the analysis of a subsequent consecutive sentence for next output; and (i) reiterating step (h) until no further reductions in the syntax of the sentence can be made wherein the first list of rules comprises substitution and concatenation rules and wherein substitution is preferred over concatenation when both may be applied to a series of tokens in the step of token merging consecutive tokens.