Paths
A Path is a meaningful sequence of Entities through a sentence. In Western languages, Paths are commonly based on sequential CRCs, thus resulting Paths have the entities (Concepts & Relations) in their original sentence order. Commonly, though not exclusively, this takes the form of a continuous sequence of CRCs. For example, in a common path sequence the Tail Concept of one CRC becomes the Head Concept of the next CRC. This results in a path consisting of five entities: C-R-C-R-C. Other meaningful sequences of Concepts and Relations are also treated as paths, such as a sequence that contains a path-relevant pronoun as a stand-in for a Concept.
In Japanese, Paths cannot be based on the sequence of Entities in the original sentence. NLP nevertheless does identify Paths as meaningful sequences of Entities within Japanese text. NLP semantic analysis of Japanese uses an entity vector algorithm to create Entity Vectors. When NLP converts a Japanese sentence into an Entity Vector it commonly lists the Entities in a different order than the original sentence to indicate which Entities are linked to each other and how strong the link between them is. The resulting Entity Vector is used for Path analysis.
A Path must contain at least two Entities. Not all sentences are paths; some very short sentences may not contain the minimum number of Entities to qualify as a path.
A path is always contained within a single sentence. However, a sentence may contain more than one path. This can occur when NLP identifies a non-continuous sequence within the sentence. Once identified, the entities that comprise a path sequence are demarcated and normalized, and the path is assigned a unique Id. Paths are useful when an analysis of just CRCs is not large enough to identify some meaningfully associated entities. Paths are especially useful when returning some smaller linguistic unit in a wider context.
