A Measure of Semantic Relatedness for Resolving Ambiguities in Natural Language Database Requests

A measure of semantic relatedness based on distance between objects in the database schema has previously been used as a basis for solving a variety of natural language understanding problems including word sense disambiguation, resolution of semantic ambiguities, and attachment of post noun modifiers. The use of min/max values which are usually recorded as part of the process of designing the database schema is proposed as a basis for solving the given problems as they arise in natural language database requests. The min/max values provide a new source of knowledge for resolving ambiguities and a semantics for understanding what knowledge has previously been used by distance measures in database schemas.