Computer Implemented Method for Extracting and Reasoning with Meaning from Text

Abstract

A text processing method for improving the accuracy of a response to a query directed to a system comprising concepts and relations defined by a knowledge base, wherein the method comprises: (i) producing a dependency tree from the query, wherein the dependency tree has at least one branch containing nodes and at least one connection between those nodes, wherein each node has a node label which corresponds to a term within the query, and wherein each connection has a label which corresponds to the linguistic relationship between terms within the query; (ii) from the dependency tree, generating a query concept using concepts and relations defined by the knowledge base; (iii) checking if the query concept has a subsumption relationship with a candidate concept retrieved from the system, and if no subsumption relationship is initially identified, optimising the dependency tree by changing the nodes, followed by repeating steps (ii) and (iii); and wherein the query concept and the candidate concept comprise at least one atomic concept.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.