Patent US 5,960,384

A parsing method and apparatus for symbolic expressions of thought such as English-language sentences is provided. The basic procedure distinguishes only between symbols for picture-like entities (such as "squirrel" or "justice") and symbols for relations (such as "above" or "pushed"). For example, to the cognitive parser the sentences "The squirrel buried a nut" and "My aunts sent a telegram" are equivalent. The parser thus operates at a level more basic than syntactic parsing, making it simpler. The illustrative embodiment, a cognitive parser for English sentences, comprises: a microprocessor, a stored lexicon including symbols and associated entity-types (picture or relation), an input device for a symbol sequence, and a procedure executing on the microprocessor for grouping the inputted picture-designating and relation-designating symbols according to rules based on entity type. A method comprising operation of the cognitive parser is also provided.