Using communicative discourse trees to detect a request for an explanation
AssigneeOracle International Corporation
InventorBoris Galitsky
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Abstract
Systems, devices, and methods of the present invention relate to detecting a request for explanation in text. In an example, a method creates a discourse tree from a subset of text. The discourse tree includes nodes, each nonterminal node representing a rhetorical relationship between two of the fragments and each terminal node of the nodes of the discourse tree is associated with one of the fragments. The method forms a communicative discourse tree from the discourse tree by matching each fragment that has a verb to a verb signature. The method further identifies that the subset of text comprises a request for an explanation by applying a classification model trained to detect a request for an explanation to the communicative discourse tree.
Claims19
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable program instructions for detecting a request for explanation in text, wherein when executed by a processing device, the computer-executable program instructions cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:
- receiving text comprising fragments;
- creating a discourse tree from the text, wherein the discourse tree comprises a plurality of nodes, each nonterminal node representing a rhetorical relationship between two of the fragments and each terminal node of the nodes of the discourse tree is associated with one of the fragments;
- forming a communicative discourse tree that represents the text by matching each fragment that has a verb to a verb signature;
- identifying that the text comprises a request for an explanation by applying a classification model trained to detect a request for an explanation to the communicative discourse tree;
- adjusting a response based on the identified request for explanation;
- and
- providing the adjusted response.
A system for providing a response to a user utterance in which a request for explanation is detected, the system comprising:
- a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable program instructions;
- and
- at least one processing device communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and executing the computer-executable program instructions comprising:
- accessing a training set of communicative discourse trees, wherein a communicative discourse tree is formed by creating a discourse tree from text, wherein the discourse tree comprises a plurality of nodes, each nonterminal node representing a rhetorical relationship between two fragments of text and each terminal node of the nodes of the discourse tree is associated with a fragment of text, and wherein forming a communicative discourse tree comprises, in the discourse tree, matching each fragment that has a verb to a verb signature;
- for each communicative discourse tree of the training set of communicative discourse trees, iteratively training a classification model by:
- providing the communicative discourse tree to the classification model;
- receiving, from the classification model, a classification that indicates either (i) a request for explanation or (ii) an absence of a request for an explanation;
- comparing the classification to an expected classification;
- and
- adjusting internal parameters of the classification model based on the comparison;
- forming, from a user utterance received from a device, an additional communicative discourse tree;
- identifying whether user utterance represents a request for an explanation by applying a classification model to the additional communicative discourse tree;
- and
- preparing a response based on the identified request for explanation;
- and
- providing the response to the device.
A system for detecting a request for explanation and providing a response, the system comprising:
- a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable program instructions;
- and
- at least one processing device communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein executing the computer-executable program instructions configures the processing device to perform operations comprising:
- accessing text;
- creating a discourse tree from the text by identifying elementary discourse units in the text, wherein the discourse tree comprises a plurality of nodes, each nonterminal node representing a rhetorical relationship between two of the elementary discourse units and each terminal node of the nodes of the discourse tree is associated with one of the elementary discourse units;
- forming a communicative discourse tree that represents the text by matching each elementary discourse unit that has a verb to a verb signature;
- identifying that the text comprises a request for an explanation by applying a classification model trained to detect a request for an explanation to the communicative discourse tree;
- preparing a response based on the identified request for explanation;
- and
- providing the response to a user device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.