Methods and apparatus for thematic parsing of discourse

摘要

A theme parsing system that determines the thematic context of input discourse is disclosed. Each word used in a language carries thematic information that conveys the importance of the meaning and content of the discourse. The theme parsing system discriminates words and phrases of the input discourse, identifying the type of importance or meaning, the impact on different parts of the discourse, and the overall contribution to the content of the discourse. The thematic conext of the discourse is determined in accordance with predetermined theme assessment criteria that is a function of the strategic importance of the discriminated words. The predetermined thematic assessment criteria defines which of the discriminated words are to be selected for each thematic analysis unit. The discourse is then output in a predetermined thematic format as a different view to a user, giving the topics of the discourse in a topic extractor, generating summarized versions of the discourse in a kernel generator, and identifying the key content of the discourse in a content extractor.