Patent
1994-12-06
1997-06-24
Hofsass, Jeffery
395793, G06F 1727
Patent
active
056425201
ABSTRACT:
A method and apparatus for recognizing the topic structure of language. Language data is divided into simple sentences and a prominent noun portion (PNP) extracted from each. The simple sentences are divided into blocks of data dealing with a single subject. A starting point of at least one topic is detected and a topic introducing region of each topic is determined from block information and language data characteristics. A PNP satisfying a predetermined condition is chosen from the PNPs in each determined topic intro. region as the topic portion (TP) of the topic in the topic intro. region. A topic level indicating a depth of nesting of each topic and a topic scope indicating a region over which the topic continues is determined from the TP and sentences before and after the TP. Sub-topic intro. regions in the remaining area where no topic intro. regions are recognized are determined from block information and language data characteristics. A PNP satisfying a predetermined condition is chosen from the PNPs in each determined sub-topic intro. region as the sub-topic portion (STP) of the sub-topic in the sub-topic intro. region. A temporary topic level indicating a depth of nesting of each sub-topic and a sub-topic scope indicating a region over which the sub-topic continues is determined from the STP and sentences before and after the STP. All determined topics and sub-topics are unified by revising the temporary topic level of each sub-topic according to the topic level of each topic. These topics and their levels are output as a topic structure.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5056021 (1991-10-01), Ausborn
patent: 5257186 (1993-10-01), Ukita et al.
patent: 5384703 (1995-01-01), Withgott et al.
Atsushi Takeshita et al., "A Study on Topic Structure Recognition and Human Communication", Proceedings of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), Fall 1993 Conference.
William C. Mann et al., "Rhetorical Structure Theory: Description and Construction of Text Structures", Natural Language Generation, Martinus Nijhof, 1990, pp. 85-96.
Marti A. Hearst, et al., "Subtopic Structuring for Full-Length Document Access", SIGIR '93 (Proceedings of the 16th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 59-68.
Marti A. Hearst, "Multi-Paragraph Segmentation of Expository Text", ACL-94 (Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics), pp. 9-16.
Udo Hahn, "On Text Coherence Parsing", COLING-92 (Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computational Linguistics), pp. 25-31.
Sadao Kurohashi et al., "Automatic Detection of Discourse Structure by Checking Surface Information in Sentences", COLING-94 (Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics), pp. 1123-1127.
Shin'ya Nakajima et al., "Prosody as a Cue for Discourse Structure", ICSLP-92 (Proceedings of International Conference on Spoken Language Processing), pp. 425-428.
Barbara Grosz et al., "Some International Characteristics of Discourse Structure", ICSLP-92 (Proceedings of International Conference on Spoken Language Processing), pp. 429-432.
Jane Morris et al., "Lexical Cohesion Computed by Thesaural Relations as an Indicator of the Structure of Text", Computational Linguistics, vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 21-48, Association for Computational Linguistics, 1991.
Robin Cohen, "Analyzing the Structure of Argumentative Discourse", Computational Linguistics, vol. 13, Nos. 1-2, Jan.-Jun., pp. 11-24, 1987.
Barbara J. Grosz et al., "Attention, Intentions, and the Structure of Discourse", Computational Linguistics, vol. 12, No. 3, Jul.-Sep., pp. 175-204, 1986.
Inoue Takafumi
Nakagawa Toru
Takeshita Atsushi
Tanaka Kazuo
Hill Andrew
Hofsass Jeffery
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
LandOfFree
Method and apparatus for recognizing topic structure of language does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method and apparatus for recognizing topic structure of language, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method and apparatus for recognizing topic structure of language will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-156629