Patent ID: 7191119

Claim:
A method of developing natural language understanding (NLU) applications comprising: determining NLU interpretation information from an NLU training corpus of text using a multi-pass processing technique, wherein alteration of one pass automatically alters an input for a subsequent pass, said NLU interpretation information specifying an interpretation of at least part of said NLU training corpus of text; storing said NLU interpretation information in a database; in a graphical editor, presenting selected items of NLU interpretation information as a meaning tree comprising terminal and non-terminal nodes representative of data items and receiving user specified edits to said NLU interpretation information; determining an intersection of selected nodes of said meaning tree from said NLU interpretation information; presenting said intersection of selected nodes as choices for adding an additional node to said meaning tree; and adding a node above said selected nodes of said meaning tree, wherein said added node is selected from said choices.