Natural language information retrieval system

A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions comprising:

• a natural language information retrieval module configured for:
• creating a group of searchable documents by, for each document, receiving text defining the document from a search engine and returning a hash-table fingerprint comprising a representation of logical form relationships for the document to the search engine, and
• for each document, receiving a natural language question and the hash-table fingerprint comprising the representation of logical form relationships for the document from the search engine and returning a document score to the search engine connoting the likelihood that the document contains an answer to the natural language question;
• and
• the search engine configured for:
• ranking the documents in order of their respective document scores, and
• displaying a list of highest ranking documents as a suggestions list of documents containing an answer to the natural language question;
• and
• wherein the natural language information retrieval module is configured for parsing each document into a plurality of sentences, further comprising a proxy process module configure for:
• receiving the sentences from one or more active client threads other than the first active client thread, each active client thread associated with the natural language information retrieval module;
• creating a process for each client thread other than the first active client thread;
• and
• passing the sentences for each client thread other than the first active client thread to a natural language processing core code module in the context of an associated process, the natural language processing core code module configured to identify one or more logical form relationships corresponding to each sentence and return the logical form relationships to the natural language information retrieval module.

A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions comprising:

• a natural language information retrieval module configured for:
• creating a group of searchable documents by, for each document, receiving test defining the document from a search engine and returning a hash-table fingerprint comprising a representation of logical form relationships for the document to the search engine, and
• for each document, receiving a natural language question and the hash-table fingerprint comprising the representation of logical form relationships for the document from the search engine and returning a document score to the search engine connoting the likelihood that the document contains an answer to the natural language question;
• and
• the search engine configured for:
• ranking the documents in order of their respective document scores, and
• displaying a list of highest ranking documents as a suggestions list of documents containing an answer to the natural language question;
• and
• further comprising a debugging module defining an interface comprising:
• a first interface method for activating and deactivating a trace document function that, when active, causes the natural language information retrieval module to identify the logical form relationships identified for document text processed by the natural language information retrieval module;
• and
• a second interface method for activating and deactivating a trace question function that, when active, causes the natural language information retrieval module to identify the logical form relationships identified for questions processed by the natural language information retrieval module.