Lexical answer type confidence estimation and application
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsJames J. Fan, David A. Ferrucci, David C. Gondek, Aditya A. Kalyanpur, Adam P. Lally, James W. Murdock, Wlodek W. Zadrozny
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system, method and computer program product for automatically estimating the confidence of a detected LAT to provide a more accurate overall score for an obtained candidate answer. A confidence “score” or value of each detected LAT is obtained, and the system and method performs combining the confidence score with a degree of match between a LAT and an AnswerType of the candidate answer to provide improved overall score for the candidate answer.
Claims21
A method for extracting features from a query comprising a text string, said method comprising:
- identifying a syntactic pattern rule associated with said query, said pattern rule identified from a set of pattern rules that define common lexical answer types (LATs), a first feature of said extracted features comprising an identified pattern rule;
- checking for prior instances of a detected lexical answer type (LAT) and computing a LAT word frequency based on said prior instances, a second feature of said extracted features comprising a computed frequency of a query word being a candidate LAT;
- obtaining a parse tree data structure associated with said query;
- identifying grammatical relations amongst words associated with said candidate LAT in said parse tree structure, a third feature of said extracted features comprising a part of speech of the candidate LAT,
- determining whether the candidate LAT word co-references some other word in said query recognized as a LAT, a fourth feature of said extracted features comprising a co-reference information, and
- applying a model to said extracted first, second, third and fourth features to produce a confidence value representing an estimated accuracy of a detected query LAT,
- wherein one or more programmed processor devices performs said identifying a syntactic pattern rule, checking for prior instances, obtaining the parse tree data structure, identifying grammatical relations, and determining LAT word co-references, and model applying.
A system for extracting features from a query comprising a text string, said system comprising:
- a memory storage device;
- one or more processor devices, each in communication to said memory device and configured to perform a method to:
- identify a syntactic pattern rule associated with said query, said pattern rule identified from a set of pattern rules that define common lexical answer types (LATs), a first feature of said extracted features comprising an identified pattern rule;
- check for prior instances of a detected lexical answer type (LAT) and computing a LAT word frequency based on said prior instances, a second feature of said extracted features comprising a computed frequency of a query word being a candidate LAT;
- obtain a parse tree data structure associated with said query;
- identify grammatical relations amongst words associated with said candidate LAT in said parse tree structure, a third feature of said extracted features comprising a part of speech of the candidate LAT,
- determine whether the candidate LAT word co-references some other word in said query recognized as a LAT, a fourth feature of said extracted features comprising a co-reference information, and
- apply a model to said extracted first, second, third and fourth features to produce a confidence value representing an estimated accuracy of a detected query LAT.
A computer program product for automatically extracting features from a query comprising a text string, the computer program device comprising a storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions run by the processing circuit for performing a method, the method comprising:
- identifying a syntactic pattern rule associated with said query, said pattern rule identified from a set of pattern rules that define common lexical answer types (LATs), a first feature of said extracted features comprising an identified pattern rule;
- checking for prior instances of a detected lexical answer type (LAT) and computing a LAT word frequency based on said prior instances, a second feature of said extracted features comprising a computed frequency of a query word being a candidate LAT;
- obtaining a parse tree data structure associated with said query;
- identifying grammatical relations amongst words associated with said candidate LAT in said parse tree structure, a third feature of said extracted features comprising a part of speech of the candidate LAT,
- determining whether the candidate LAT word co-references some other word in said query recognized as a LAT, a fourth feature of said extracted features comprising a co-reference information, and
- applying a model to said extracted first, second, third and fourth features to produce a confidence value representing an estimated accuracy of a detected query LAT.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.