METHOD OF IDENTIFYING MEMBERS OF CLASSES IN A NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM

A method of configuring classes in a natural language understanding (NLU) system. The method can include the steps of assigning a unique value to members of a class in the NLU system. The step of generating possible substrings from the members in the class also can be included. Additionally, for each generated substring having at least one term in common with one of the members in the class, the step of associating with the generated substring the unique value assigned to the member can be included.