Patent Document ID: 8296319
Application ID: 13380745

Base Claim:
1. An information retrieving apparatus comprising: a processor coupled to a memory including: a document collecting unit that collects documents; a first document segment decomposing unit that decomposes a sentence in the collected documents into segments; a first document dependency parsing unit that parses a modification relation between segments in the sentence in the documents, and classifying each of the segments to kinds of the segments of at least a leaf segment and a root segment; a document structure storing unit that stores the documents, the sentences in the documents, the segments in the sentences, and the kinds of the segments; a receiving unit that receives, from a user terminal, information of a questioning sentence from the user to be input to the user terminal; a second document segment decomposing unit that decomposes the questioning sentence from the user into segments; a second document dependency parsing unit that parses a modification relation between segments in the questioning sentence from the user and classifying each of the segments to kinds of the segments of at least a leaf segment and a root segment; a sentence extracting unit that extracts each of sentences including a root segment corresponding to a root segment in the questioning sentence from the user by referring to the document structure storing unit; a retrieving unit that retrieves a leaf segment which is missing in leaf segments of the questioning sentence from the user, in leaf segments in each of sentences with reference to the extracted sentences; and a transmitting unit that transmits the segment retrieved by the retrieving unit to the terminal, wherein the first document dependency parsing unit gives an arc to a modification relation between segments in the sentence in the collected documents, the first document dependency parting unit compares the number of arcs in a root segment with the number of arcs of a leaf segment connected to the root segment via an arc, in the case where the number of arcs of the root segment is smaller than that of the leaf segment, converts the kinds of the segments from the leaf segment to a root segment for a search, and converts the kinds of the segments from the root segment to a leaf segment, for a search, and the document structure storing unit stores the segment, the kinds of segments and the arc subjected to the conversion.

---

Claim 3:
3. The information retrieving apparatus according to claims 1 , further comprising a questioning sentence generating unit for generating a questioning sentence to the user on the basis of the retrieved segment, wherein the transmitting unit transmits the questioning sentence to the user to the user terminal.