System and method for automatically summarizing fine-grained opinions in digital text

摘要

A method and system for automatically summarizing fine-grained opinions in digital text are disclosed. Accordingly, a digital text is analyzed for the purpose of extracting all opinion expressions found in the text. Next, the extracted opinion expressions (referred to herein as opinion frames) are analyzed to generate opinion summaries. In forming an opinion summary, those opinion frames sharing in common an opinion source and/or opinion topic may be combined, such that an overall opinion summary indicates an aggregate opinion held by the common source toward the common topic.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method, using a hardware processor, for generating an opinion summary from a digital text, said method comprising:
using at least one of syntactic analysis, semantic analysis and discourse analysis to assist in automatically extracting a plurality of opinion expressions from the digital text using the processor, each opinion expression identified by a grammatical element and associated with an opinion source to which the opinion expression is to be attributed, an opinion topic, an opinion polarity and an opinion strength, wherein for each opinion expression the opinion source is at least one person or entity to which such opinion expression is to be attributed, and wherein the digital text includes opinions expressions from a plurality of opinion sources; identifying those opinion expressions that share a common opinion source and a common opinion topic using the processor; and combining the opinion polarities and opinion strengths of those opinion expressions that share a common opinion source to form an overall opinion summary with one aggregate opinion frame for each common opinion source-topic pairing.