Inducing and Applying a Subject-Targeted Context Free Grammar
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsChristopher B. Quirk, Pallavi Choudhury, Jurij Ganitkevic, Luke S. Zettlemoyer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A processing system is described which induces a context free grammar (CFG) based on a set of descriptions. The descriptions pertain to a particular subject. Thus, the CFG targets the particular subject, and is accordingly referred to as a subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG). The processing system can use the ST-CFG to determine whether a new description is a proper description of the subject. The processing system also provides synthesizing functionality for building an ST-CFG based on one or more smaller component ST-CFGs.
Claims20
A method for inducing a context free grammar, comprising:
- receiving descriptions that pertain to a defined subject;
- parsing the descriptions using a first context free grammar (CFG), to provide parsed description information;
- providing an unrefined subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG) by retaining a subset of the first CFG that is used to parse the descriptions;
- refining the unrefined ST-CFG to produce a refined ST-CFG, the refined ST-CFG modeling the descriptions more accurately compared to the unrefined ST-CFG;
- and
- storing the refined ST-CFG in a data store,
- said receiving, parsing, providing, refining, and storing being performed by one or more computer devices.
A processing system, implemented by one or more computer devices, for inducing a context free grammar, comprising:
- a stimulus-generating module configured to generate stimulus information that represents a subject;
- a description-collection module configured to:
- present the stimulus information to a plurality of human participants;
- and
- receive descriptions from the human participants, each human participant formulating a description that characterizes the stimulus information;
- and
- a grammar-inducing module, comprising:
- a parsing module configured to parse the descriptions using a first context free grammar (CFG), to provide parsed description information, the parsed description information providing an unrefined subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG) by retaining a subset of the first CFG that is used to parse the descriptions;
- a refinement module configured to refine the unrefined ST-CFG to produce a refined ST-CFG, the refined ST-CFG including syntactic categories and rules that model the descriptions more accurately compared to the unrefined ST-CFG;
- and
- a data store for storing the refined ST-CFG.
A computer readable storage medium for storing computer readable instructions, the computer readable instructions providing a processing system when executed by one or more processing devices, the computer readable instructions comprising:
- logic configured to receive descriptions that pertain to a defined subject;
- and
- logic configured to induce a subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG) based on the descriptions, the ST-CFG defining a language of semantically and syntactically acceptable statements pertaining to the subject.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.