Phrase recognition method and apparatus

A computer-implemented method of full-text, on-line searching, the method comprising:

• a) receiving and executing a search query to display at least one current document;
• b) receiving a command to search for documents having similar conceptual content to the current document;
• c) executing a phrase recognition process to extract phrases allowing full text searches for documents having similar conceptual content to the current document, the phrase recognition process including the steps of:
• c1) partitioning the document text into plural chunks of document text, each chunk being separated by at least one partition entity from a partition list;
• and
• c2) selecting certain chunks as the phrases, based on frequencies of occurrence of the chunks within the stream of document text;
• and
• d) automatically forming a second search query based at least on the phrases determined in the phrase recognition process so as to allow automated searching for documents having similar conceptual content to the current document.

A computer-implemented method of forming a phrase list containing phrases that are indicative of conceptual content of each of a plurality of documents, which phrases are used as index terms or in document search queries formed after the phrase list is formed, the method comprising:

• a) selecting document text from the plurality of documents;
• b) executing a phrase recognition process including the steps of:
• b1) partitioning the document text into plural chunks of document text, each chunk being separated by at least one partition entity from a partition list;
• and
• b2) selecting certain chunks as the phrases, based on frequencies of occurrence of the chunks within the stream of document text;
• and
• c) forming the phrase list, wherein the phrase list includes:
• 1) phrases extracted by the phrase recognition process;
• and
• 2) respective frequencies of occurrence of the extracted phrases.

A computer-implemented method of forming phrase lists containing phrases that are indicative of conceptual content of documents, which phrases are used as index terms or in document search queries formed after the phrase list is formed, the method comprising

• a) selecting document text from a sampling of documents from among a larger collection of documents;
• and
• b) executing a phrase recognition process to extract phrases to form a phrase list for each document processed, the phrase recognition process including:
• b1) partitioning the document text into plural chunks of document text, each chunk being separated by at least one partition entity from a partition list;
• and
• b2) selecting certain chunks as the phrases of the phrase list based on frequencies of occurrence of the chunks within the stream of document text.