Patent Document ID: 9898554
Application ID: 14083057

Base Claim:
1. A method implemented in a data processing apparatus, the method comprising: receiving, at the data processing apparatus, a query in unstructured form, the query including a plurality of terms, each of the terms at a respective ordinal position in the query; comparing, by the data processing apparatus, the terms of the query to a plurality of query templates, each query template including terms of variable data and terms of invariable data, wherein the terms of variable data specifies a class of terms and the terms of invariable data specifies particular instances of terms; determining, by the data processing apparatus and based on the comparison, a match of the query terms to a first query template, wherein the first query template is not determined to be indicative of a question query; determining, by the data processing apparatus and based on the first query template, a second query template; and determining, by the data processing apparatus, that the query is an implicit question query in response to the second query template being indicative of a question query; wherein determining, based on the first query template, the second query template comprises: generating synthetic templates from the first template, each synthetic template being the first template in combination with one of a corresponding plurality of question prefix terms; and determining that one of the synthetic templates specify the second query template in the plurality of query templates.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising validating the second query template based on query statistics of queries that match the second query template.