Method and apparatus for identifying words with common stems
AssigneeSun Microsystems, Inc.
InventorWilliam A. Woods
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods and systems for matching a query term Q to a text term T which are useful, for example, in information retrieval systems. A likelihood is determined whether the query term Q and the text term T share a common stem and, if the likelihood exceeds a threshold, the text term is included in a set of matched terms. The likelihood determination may be based on determining a longest shared substring of query term Q and text term T.
Claims32
A method of matching a query term Q to a text term T comprising:
- determining a length LSS of a longest shared substring of query term Q and text term T;
- determining a ratio R of length LSS to a larger of a length LQ of query term Q and a length LT of text term T;
- and
- determining if the ratio R is greater than or equal to a threshold parameter c and if so, finding a match between the query term Q and the text term T.
A computer-readable medium containing instructions to perform a method of matching a query term Q to a text term T, the method comprising:
- determining a length LSS of a longest shared substring of query term Q and query term T;
- determining a ratio R of length LSS to a larger of a length LQ of query term Q and a length LT of text term T;
- and
- determining if the ratio R is greater than or equal to a threshold parameter c and if so, finding a match between the query term Q and the text term T.
An apparatus comprising:
- means for determining a length LSS of a longest shared substring of a query term Q and a text term T;
- means for determining a ratio R of length LSS to a larger of a length LQ of query term Q and a length LT of text term T;
- and
- means for determining if ratio R is greater than or equal to a threshold parameter c and if so, finding a match between the query term Q and the text term T.
An information retrieval system for identifying text terms or documents containing text terms of interest to a user entering a search request, the system including a computer-readable medium containing instructions to perform a method of matching a query term Q of the search request to a text term T, the method comprising:
- determining a length LSS of a longest shared substring of query term Q and text term T;
- determining a ratio R of length LSS to a larger of a length LQ of query term Q and a length LT of text term T;
- and
- determining if ratio R is greater than or equal to a threshold parameter c and if so, finding a match between the query term Q and the text term T.
A text retrieval system comprising:
- an index of terms that occur in texts;
- a computer-readable medium containing instructions to perform a method, the method comprising:
- matching one or more terms in a query with one or more terms in the index that are determined likely to share a stem with the one or more query terms;
- and
- computing a degree to which each matched text term is determined likely to share a stem with the one or more query terms.
An apparatus for matching a query term Q with a text term T including at least one memory having program instructions, and at least one processor configured to execute the program instructions to perform the operations of:
- determining a length LSS of a longest shared substring of query term Q and text term T;
- determining a ratio R of LSS to a larger of a length LQ of query term Q and a length LT of text term T;
- and
- determining if ratio R is greater than or equal to a threshold parameter c and if so, finding a match between query term Q and the text term T.
A method of matching a query term Q to a text term T comprising computing a shared substring function FSS from the query term Q and text term T that is correlated with a likelihood that the two terms share a common stem, and if this function FSS exceeds a threshold, finding a match between the query term Q and the text term T.
A method of determining a set of likely morphological variants of a term Q by analyzing a collection of terms T and identifying one or more of the terms T that are sufficiently similar to term Q.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.