Readability awareness in natural language processing systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9916380-B2
Application number	US-201615159986-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 20, 2016
Priority date	Jan 5, 2016
Publication date	Mar 13, 2018
Grant date	Mar 13, 2018

Abstract

Electronic natural language processing in a natural language processing (NLP) system, such as a Question-Answering (QA) system. A receives electronic text input, in question form, and determines a readability level indicator in the question. The readability level indicator includes at least a grammatical error, a slang term, and a misspelling type. The computer determines a readability level for the electronic text input based on the readability level indicator, and retrieves candidate answers based on the readability level.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for electronic natural language processing in an electronic natural language processing (NLP) system, comprising:
receiving an electronic text input;
determining a readability level indicator of the electronic text input, wherein the readability level indicator comprises at least one of a grammatical error, a slang term, and a misspelling type in the electronic text input;
determining a readability level of the electronic text input based on the readability level indicator:
generating a plurality of candidate answers for a question; and
selecting a set of candidate answers from among the plurality of candidate answers based on matching readability levels of the set of candidate answers to the readability level of the question.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving the electronic text input from an electronic input source in response to an input from a user.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
identifying the electronic text input as the question.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying at least one of a slang term and a misspelling in the electronic text input comprises identifying, in the electronic text input, one or more of:
an abbreviation of a word corresponding to an acronym associated with the word in a collection of text messaging acronyms; and
a misspelling of the word, wherein the misspelling corresponds to a phonetic reading of the word.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
parsing the electronic text input using a full parsing process.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
comparing the readability indicators of the electronic text input with readability indicators of one or more questions in a corpus of questions,
wherein determining the readability level for the electronic text input is based on readability levels of the one or more questions.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
training a natural language processing model based on the results of the comparison.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Byron Donna K
• Goyal Devendra
• Krishnamurthy Lakshminarayanan
• Santos Moraes Priscilla
• Smith Michael C

Classifications

• G06F16/345

  Summarisation for human users · CPC title

• G06F16/3344 Primary

  using natural language analysis · CPC title

• G06F40/232 Primary

  Orthographic correction, e.g. spell checking or vowelisation · CPC title

• G06F40/253

  Grammatical analysis; Style critique · CPC title

• G06F40/205

  Parsing · CPC title