System and method for the automatic construction of generalization-specialization hierarchy of terms from a database of terms and associated meanings

Abstract

A computer program product is provided as an automatic mining system to build a generalization hierarchy of terms from a database of terms and associated meanings, using for example the Least General Generalization (LGG) model. The automatic mining system is comprised of a terms database, an augmentation module, a generalization detection module, and a hierarchy database. The terms database stores the terms and their meanings, and the hierarchy database stores the generalization hierarchy which is defined by a set of edges and nodes. The augmentation module updates the terms using the LGG model. The generalization detection module maps the generalizations derived by the augmentation module, updates the edges, and derives a generalization hierarchy. In operation, the automatic mining system begins with no predefined taxonomy of the concept terms, and the LGG model derives a generalization hierarchy, modeled as a Directed Acyclic Graph from the terms.