Patent ID: 7376551

Claim:
A method of identifying definitions in documents, the method comprising: receiving as input text a plurality of text units; identifying which of the plurality of text units includes a cue phrase; eliminating from consideration of potentially containing a definition any of the plurality of text units which do not include a cue phrase; for text units identified as including a cue phrase, performing localized parsing around the cue phrase to determine whether the text unit including the cue phrase contains a definition, wherein performing localized parsing around the cue phrase of the text unit comprises searching for a left phrase in the text unit within a first predetermined window of the cue phrase and searching for a right phrase in the text unit within a second predetermined window of the cue phrase; applying positive and negative scoring to the left phrase and the right phrase based upon a set of scoring rules to obtain phrase scoring; combining the scoring for the left phrase and the right phrase to obtain an overall score for the text unit; and determining whether the text unit including the cue phrase contains a definition as a function of the overall score for the text unit.