Method and apparatus for determining search result demographics

A method for frame-based search, performed by computing hardware and programmable memory, comprising the following steps:

• receiving a first rule, for producing an instance in accordance with a first frame, wherein the first frame comprises a first input role and a first output role;
• receiving a second rule, for producing an instance in accordance with a second frame, wherein the second frame comprises a second input role and a second output role;
• receiving a first source corpus;
• identifying first and second units of natural language from, respectively, first and second records of the first source corpus;
• producing a first instance, from the first unit, by application of the first rule, wherein the first instance has a first input value assigned to its first input role and a first output value assigned to its first output role;
• producing a second instance, from the second unit, by application of the second rule, wherein the second instance has a second input value assigned to its second input role and a second output value assigned to its second output role;
• matching an input user query to the first input value of the first instance, and the second input value of the second instance;
• determining the first and second instances represent a same third frame;
• determining a same third value as representative of the first and second input values;
• determining a same fourth value as representative of the first and second output values;
• producing, as a result of computing hardware and programmable memory, a first result that contains a first result-value and a first result-base, wherein the first result-value is the fourth value and the first result-base contains the first and second records;
• determining, as a result of computing hardware and programmable memory, a member-level demographic value for each member of the first result-base;
• determining, as a result of computing hardware and programmable memory, a first demographic value, for the first result, by combining the member-level demographic values;
• and
• displaying, to a user as part of a search result, the first demographic value as a demographic determined for the first result-value.