US6161084A — Information retrieval utilizing semantic represen…

Claim 1

Independent Claim 153 words

A method in a computer system for generating information retrieval tokens from an input string, the method comprising the steps of: creating from the input string a primary logical form characterizing a semantic relationship between selected words in the input string; identifying hypernyms of the selected words in the input string, at least one hypernym being identified from a group of hypernyms associated with a selected word wherein at least one other hypernym in the group is not identified; constructing from the primary logical form one or more alternative logical forms, each alternative logical form being constructed by, for each of one or more of the selected words in the input string, replacing the selected word in the primary logical form with an identified hypernym of the selected word; and generating tokens representing both the primary logical form and the alternative logical forms, the generated tokens being distinguishable by an information retrieval engine.

Claim 2

Independent Claim 153 words

A method in a computer system for generating information retrieval tokens from an input string, the method comprising the steps of: creating from the input string a primary logical form characterizing a semantic relationship between selected words in the input string; identifying hypernyms of the selected words in the input string, at least one hypernym being identified from a group of hypernyms associated with a selected word wherein at least one other hypernym in the group is not identified; constructing from the primary logical form one or more alternative logical forms, each alternative logical form being constructed by, for each of one or more of the selected words in the input string, replacing the selected word in the primary logical form with an identified hypernym of the selected word; and generating tokens representing both the primary logical form and the alternative logical forms, the generated tokens being distinguishable by an information retrieval engine.

Claim 3

Dependent Claim 24 words

The method of claim 1 wherein the constructing step includes the step of parsing the input string to discern its syntactic and semantic structure.

Claim 4

Dependent Claim 65 words

The method of claim 2 wherein the identifying step includes the steps of: for each selected word of the input text: retrieving from a linguistic knowledge base one or more hypernyms of the selected word each having a similarity value characterizing the similarity in meaning of the hypernym to the selected word; and identifying any of the hypernyms whose similarity value exceeds a preestablished threshold.

Claim 5

Dependent Claim 42 words

The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of: before the constructing step, selecting the input string from a search query; and submitting the generated tokens to a query engine for comparison to a representation of one or more target documents.

Claim 6

Dependent Claim 45 words

The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of: before the constructing step, selecting the input string from a body of text to be indexed; and submitting the generated tokens to an indexing subsystem for storage in an index representing the body of text.

Claim 7

Dependent Claim 58 words

The method of claim 5, further including the step of determining an inverse document frequency of each of the words occurring in the alternative logical forms, and wherein the submitting step omits to submit to the indexing subsystem tokens representing alternative logical forms containing words whose inverse document frequency is smaller than a preestablished minimum inverse document frequency.

Claim 8

Dependent Claim 55 words

The method of claim 5, further including the steps of: after the submitting step, determining an inverse document frequency of each of the words occurring in the alternative logical forms; and removing from the index tokens representing alternative logical forms containing words whose inverse document frequency is smaller than a preestablished minimum inverse document frequency.

Claim 9

Dependent Claim 26 words

The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying step identifies hypernyms of the selected words that have coherent hyponym sets with respect to the selected words.

Claim 10

Dependent Claim 155 words

A computer-readable medium whose contents cause a computer system to generate information retrieval tokens from an input string by performing the steps of: creating from the input string a primary logical form characterizing a semantic relationship between selected words in the input string; identifying hypernyms of the selected words in the input string, at least one hypernym being identified from a group of hypernyms associated with a selected word wherein at least one other hypernym in the group is not identified; constructing from the primary logical form one or more alternative logical forms, each alternative logical form being constructed by, for each of one or more of the selected words in the input string, replacing the selected word in the primary logical form with an identified hypernym of the selected word; and generating tokens representing both the primary logical form and the alternative logical forms, the generated tokens being distinguishable by an information retrieval engine.

Claim 11

Dependent Claim 155 words

A computer-readable medium whose contents cause a computer system to generate information retrieval tokens from an input string by performing the steps of: creating from the input string a primary logical form characterizing a semantic relationship between selected words in the input string; identifying hypernyms of the selected words in the input string, at least one hypernym being identified from a group of hypernyms associated with a selected word wherein at least one other hypernym in the group is not identified; constructing from the primary logical form one or more alternative logical forms, each alternative logical form being constructed by, for each of one or more of the selected words in the input string, replacing the selected word in the primary logical form with an identified hypernym of the selected word; and generating tokens representing both the primary logical form and the alternative logical forms, the generated tokens being distinguishable by an information retrieval engine.

Claim 12

Dependent Claim 25 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the constructing step includes the step of parsing the input string to discern its syntactic and semantic structure.

Claim 13

Dependent Claim 66 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the identifying step includes the steps of: for each selected word of the input text: retrieving from a linguistic knowledge base one or more hypernyms of the selected word each having a similarity value characterizing the similarity in meaning of the hypernym to the selected word; and identifying any of the hypernyms whose similarity value exceeds a preestablished threshold.

Claim 14

Dependent Claim 55 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the contents of the computer-readable medium further cause the computer system to perform the steps of: before the constructing step, selecting the input string from a search query; and submitting the generated tokens to a query engine for comparison to a representation of one or more target documents.

Claim 15

Dependent Claim 58 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the contents of the computer-readable medium further cause the computer system to perform the steps of: before the constructing step, selecting the input string from a body of text to be indexed; and submitting the generated tokens to an indexing subsystem for storage in an index representing the body of text.

Claim 16

Dependent Claim 71 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein the contents of the computer-readable medium further cause the computer system to perform the step of determining an inverse document frequency of each of the words occurring in the alternative logical forms, and wherein the submitting step omits to submit to the indexing subsystem tokens representing alternative logical forms containing words whose inverse document frequency is smaller than a preestablished minimum inverse document frequency.

Claim 17

Dependent Claim 56 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 13, further including the steps of: after the submitting step, determining an inverse document frequency of each of the words occurring in the alternative logical forms; and removing from the index tokens representing alternative logical forms containing words whose inverse document frequency is smaller than a preestablished minimum inverse document frequency.

Claim 18

Dependent Claim 27 words

The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the identifying step identifies hypernyms of the selected words that have coherent hyponym sets with respect to the selected words.

Claim 19

Independent Claim 142 words

A method in a computer system for creating and accessing an information retrieval index, the index characterizing one or more indexed documents by storing tokenized semantic structures occurring in the indexed documents, the method comprising the steps of: for each of a plurality of passages in the indexed documents; receiving a plurality of tokenized semantic structures all corresponding to the same passage, receiving an indexed document location for the passage, and storing in the index mappings from each of the plurality of received tokenized semantic structures to the index document location; and for a query issued against the indexed documents: receiving a tokenized semantic structure corresponding to the query, identifying in the index a mapping from a tokenized semantic structure matching the tokenized semantic structure corresponding to the query to an identified indexed document location, and returning the identified indexed document location.

Claim 20

Independent Claim 142 words

A method in a computer system for creating and accessing an information retrieval index, the index characterizing one or more indexed documents by storing tokenized semantic structures occurring in the indexed documents, the method comprising the steps of: for each of a plurality of passages in the indexed documents; receiving a plurality of tokenized semantic structures all corresponding to the same passage, receiving an indexed document location for the passage, and storing in the index mappings from each of the plurality of received tokenized semantic structures to the index document location; and for a query issued against the indexed documents: receiving a tokenized semantic structure corresponding to the query, identifying in the index a mapping from a tokenized semantic structure matching the tokenized semantic structure corresponding to the query to an identified indexed document location, and returning the identified indexed document location.

Claim 21

Dependent Claim 61 words

The method of claim 17 wherein the step of receiving a tokenized semantic structure corresponding to the query includes the step of receiving a plurality of tokenized semantic structures all corresponding to the same query, and wherein the identifying step identifies a mapping from a tokenized semantic structure matching any of the plurality of tokenized semantic structures corresponding to the query.

Annuity Stage	Window Opens	Payment Deadline	Surcharge Period Until	Estimated Fee	Status
3.5 Years (Year 4)	2003-12-12	2004-06-12	2004-12-12	$2000.00	Window Closed / Lapsed
7.5 Years (Year 8)	2007-12-12	2008-06-12	2008-12-12	$3760.00	Window Closed / Lapsed
11.5 Years (Year 12)	2011-12-12	2012-06-12	2012-12-12	$7700.00	Window Closed / Lapsed

Information retrieval utilizing semantic representation of text by identifying hypernyms and indexing multiple tokenized semantic structures to a same passage of text

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