Sorting of Numeric Values Using an Identification of Superlative Adjectives

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• for a set of adjectives A and a set of nouns N identified from a corpus:
• for each term, determine a first indication of whether each adjective a in a set of adjectives A is to modify the term, wherein the term is a noun n in the set of nouns N;
• determine a second indication of whether each noun n in the set of nouns N is to modify each adjective a in the set of adjectives A;
• using the first indication and the second indication, determine a third indication of whether each noun n in the set of nouns N is to be modified by either a maximum or minimum superlative adjective;
• determine whether the third indication is greater than or equal to a predetermined threshold;
• and
• responsive to the third indication being greater than or equal to the predetermined threshold, identify the adjective a that modifies the noun n as a superlative adjective ai and as either a maximum or a minimum superlative adjective in a set of maximum or minimum superlative adjectives;
• and
• provide the set of maximum or minimum superlative adjectives to a question decomposition stage or hypothesis generation stage of the cognitive system for sorting of the numeric values.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor, and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• for a set of adjectives A and a set of nouns N identified from a corpus:
• for each term, determine a first indication of whether each adjective a in a set of adjectives A is to modify the term, wherein the term is a noun n in the set of nouns N;
• determine a second indication of whether each noun n in the set of nouns N is to modify each adjective a in the set of adjectives A;
• using the first indication and the second indication, determine a third indication of whether each noun n in the set of nouns N is to be modified by either a maximum or minimum superlative adjective;
• determine whether the third indication is greater than or equal to a predetermined threshold;
• and
• responsive to the third indication being greater than or equal to the predetermined threshold, identify the adjective a that modifies the noun n as a superlative adjective ai and as either a maximum or a minimum superlative adjective in a set of maximum or minimum superlative adjectives;
• and
• provide the set of maximum or minimum superlative adjectives to a question decomposition stage or hypothesis generation stage of the cognitive system for sorting of the numeric values.