Semantic parsing using deep neural networks for predicting canonical forms

1. A method comprising:

providing a neural network model which has been trained to predict a canonical form, containing a sequence of words, for an input text sequence, containing a sequence of words, the neural network model comprising:

an encoder which generates a first representation of the input text sequence based on a representation of n-grams in the text sequence, the encoder including a first neural network which reads the input text sequence and generates a second representation of the input text sequence, and

a decoder which sequentially predicts a next term of the canonical form, based on the first and second representations and a predicted prefix of the canonical form, the prefix containing a sequence of at least one word;

receiving an input text sequence, containing a sequence of words;

with a processor, predicting a canonical form, containing a sequence of words, for the input text sequence with the trained neural network model; and

outputting information based on the predicted canonical form.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

parsing the predicting canonical form to generate a logical form; and

generating a query based on the logical form.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

querying a knowledge base with the query; and

retrieving a response to the query from the knowledge base, the output information being based on the response.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

training the neural network model on training data, the training data comprising training pairs, each training pair including a canonical form and a corresponding text sequence.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:

generating the training pairs comprising collecting text sequences for a set of canonical forms using crowdsourcing.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first neural network comprises a first recurrent neural network.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the first recurrent neural network is a first long short-term memory neural network.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the decoder comprises a second neural network which sequentially predicts the prefix of the canonical form.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the second neural network comprises a second long short-term memory neural network.

10. The method of claim 8 , wherein the decoder comprises a multilayer perceptron which sequentially generates a next term of the canonical form based on the first and second representations and the predicted prefix of the canonical form.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the next term of the canonical form is estimated as:

P ( y t |u l ,u b ,c l,t-1 )= s ′( W′ 2 ( s ′( W′ 1 ( z ))))  (3),

where z is a combined representation generated from the first and second representations and the predicted prefix c l,t-1 of the canonical form, W′ 1 , W′ 2 are parameter matrices that are learned during training, and s′ is a non-linear activation function.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the neural network model includes at least one embedding layer which converts words of the input text sequence to vectorial representations.

13. A system comprising memory which stores instructions for performing the method of claim 1 and a processor in communication with the memory which executes the instructions.

14. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a computer, perform the method of claim 1 .

15. A method comprising:

providing a neural network model which has been trained to predict a canonical form for an input text sequence, the neural network model comprising:

an encoder which comprises a first multilayer perceptron which generates a first representation of the input text sequence based on a representation of n-grams in the text sequence, and

a first recurrent neural network which reads the input text sequence and generates a second representation of the input text sequence, and

a decoder which sequentially predicts a next term of the canonical form, based on the first and second representations and a predicted prefix of the canonical form;

receiving an input text sequence;

with a processor, predicting a canonical form for the input text sequence with the trained neural network model; and

outputting information based on the predicted canonical form.

16. A system comprising:

memory which stores a neural network model which has been trained to predict a canonical form for an input text sequence, the neural network model comprising:

an encoder which generates a first representation of the input text sequence based on a representation of n-grams in the text sequence and a second representation of the input text sequence generated by a first neural network, and

a decoder which sequentially predicts terms of the canonical form based on the first and second representations and a predicted prefix of the canonical form;

a prediction component which predicts a canonical form for an input text sequence with the trained neural network model;

a semantic parser which generates a logical form based on the predicted canonical form;

an output component which outputs information based on the predicted canonical form; and

a processor which implements the prediction component and the output component.

17. The system of claim 16 , further comprising a learning component which trains the neural network model on training data, the training data comprising training pairs, each training pair including a canonical form and a corresponding text sequence.

18. The system of claim 17 , further comprising a querying component which queries a knowledge base with a query based on the logical form for retrieving responsive information.

19. A method for predicting a canonical form comprising:

providing training data, the training data comprising a collection of training pairs, each training pair in the collection including a canonical form, containing a sequence of words, and a corresponding text sequence, containing a sequence of words;

with the training data, training a neural network model to predict a canonical form, containing a sequence of words, for an input text sequence, the neural network model comprising:

an encoder which generates a first representation of the input text sequence based on a representation of n-grams in the text sequence and a second representation of the input text sequence generated by a first neural network, and

a decoder which sequentially predicts terms of the canonical form based on the first and second representations and a predicted prefix of the canonical form, each of the terms of the canonical form including at least one word;

receiving an input text sequence, containing a sequence of words;

with a processor, predicting a canonical form, containing a sequence of words, for the input text sequence with the trained neural network model; and

outputting information based on the predicted canonical form.