Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Educational Testing Service

Lisa Braden-Harder

William B Dolan

Jill C Burstein

Martin S Chodorow

Simon H Corston

Chi Lu

Lucy H Vanderwende

Susanne Wolff

Bruce A Kaplan

Donald A Rock

Karen Kukich

A system filters documents in a document set retrieved from a document store in response to a query. The system obtains a first set of logical forms based on a selected one of the query and the documents in the document set. The system obtains a second set of logical forms based on another of the query and the documents in the document set. The system then uses natural language processing techniques to modify the first logical forms to obtain a modified set of logical forms. The system filters documents in the document set based on a predetermined relationship between the modified set of logical forms and the second set of logical forms.

System for processing textual inputs using natural language processing techniques

A method of grading an essay using an automated essay scoring system is provided. The method comprises the automated steps of (a) parsing the essay to produce parsed text, wherein the parsed text is a syntactic representation of the essay, (b) using the parsed text to create a vector of syntactic features derived from the essay, (c) using the parsed text to create a vector of rhetorical features derived from the essay, (d) creating a first score feature derived from the essay, (e) creating a second score feature derived from the essay, and (f) processing the vector of syntactic features, the vector of rhetorical features, the first score feature, and the second score feature to generate a score for the essay. The essay scoring system comprises a Syntactic Feature Analysis program which creates a vector of syntactic features of the electronic essay text, a Rhetorical Feature Analysis program which creates a vector of rhetorical features of the electronic essay text, an EssayContent program which creates a first Essay Score Feature, an ArgContent program which creates a second Essay Score Feature, and a scoring engine which generates a final score for the essay from the vector of syntactic features, the vector of rhetorical features, the first score feature, and the second score feature.

System and method for computer-based automatic essay scoring

Apparatus and accompanying methods for an information retrieval system that utilizes natural language processing to process results retrieved by, for example, an information retrieval engine such as a conventional statistical-based search engine, in order to improve overall precision. Specifically, such a search ultimately yields a set of retrieved documents. Each such document is then subjected to natural language processing to produce a set of logical forms. Each such logical form encodes, in a word-relation-word manner, semantic relationships, particularly argument and adjunct structure, between words in a phrase. A user-supplied query is analyzed in the same manner to yield a set of corresponding logical forms therefor. Documents are ranked as a predefined function of the logical forms from the documents and the query. Specifically, the set of logical forms for the query is then compared against a set of logical forms for each of the retrieved documents in order to ascertain a match between any such logical forms in both sets. Each document that has at least one matching logical forms is heuristically scored, with each different relation for a matching logical forms being assigned a different corresponding predefined weight. The score of each such document is, e.g., a predefined function of the weights of its uniquely matching logical forms. Finally, the retained documents are ranked in order of descending score and then presented to a user in that order.

Apparatus and methods for an information retrieval system that employs

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Reston, VA, United States of America

Lisa Braden-Harder