Abstract: The present invention is a named entity (NE) interface to a linguistic analysis layer. The interface exposes each input sentence to the NE recognizers of all applications and returns all recognized NEs. Thus, the present invention can accommodate NEs which dynamically change in the applications, because each input string will be handed to the applications for NE recognition. The present invention also includes a data structure which is a normalized form of recognized NEs.

Abstract: The present invention is a system and method for normalizing a discourse representation structure (DRS). The elements of the structure are rewritten and sorted in a way such that structures which may appear different but are nonetheless equivalent can be associated with the same, normalized representation. The present invention can also include a data structure for a DRS. The DRS is represented by an array of boxes, each having a set of elements which in turn has a predefined structure suitable for representing a wide variety of linguistic information.

Abstract: The present invention is a system and method for performing semantic analysis that interprets a linguistic structure output by a natural language linguistic analysis system. The semantic analysis system converts the linguistic output by the natural language linguistic analysis system into a data structure model referred to as a semantic discourse representation structure (SemDRS).

Abstract: An authoring tool (or process) to facilitate the performance of an annotation function and an indexing function. The annotation function may generate informational annotations and word annotations to a database design schema (e.g., an entity-relationship diagram or “ERD”). The indexing function may analyze the words of the annotations by classifying the words in accordance with a concordance and dictionary, and assign a normalized weight to each word of each of the annotations based on the classification(s) of the word(s) of the annotation. A query translator (or query translation process) to (i) accept a natural language query from a user interface process, (ii) convert the natural language query to a formal command query (e.g., an SQL query) using the indexed annotations generated by the authoring tool and the database design schema, and (iii) present the formal command query to a database management process for interrogating the relational database.