FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX NATURAL LANGUAGE QUERIES IN A DIALOG CONTEXT

A domain-independent framework parses and interprets compound natural language queries in the context of a conversation between a human and an agent. Generic grammar rules and corresponding semantics support the understanding of compound queries in the conversation context. The sub-queries themselves are from one or more domains, and they are parsed and interpreted by a pre-existing grammar, covering one or more pre-existing domains. The pre-existing grammar, extended by the generic rules, recognizes all compound queries based on any queries recognized by the pre-existing grammar. Use of the disclosed framework requires little or no change in the domain-specific NLU handling code. The framework defines a generic approach to propagating context data between sub-queries of a compound query. The framework can be further extended to propagate intra-query context data in, out and across query components. Complex query results, and other data such as accounting data, can also be propagated simultaneously with dialog context data in a consolidated intra-query context data structure.