SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COMPILING AND USING TAXONOMY LOOKUP SOURCES IN A NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING (NLU) FRAMEWORK

A natural language understanding (NLU) framework includes a lookup source framework, which enables a lookup source system to be defined having one or more lookup sources. In particular, taxonomy lookup sources can be compiled from suitable taxonomy source data that represents relationships between various entities within a domain of a client. These taxonomy lookup sources can extract taxonomy segmentations from utterances, such as received user utterances and sample utterances of an intent-entity model. The taxonomy segmentations can then be leveraged by the NLU system to perform vocabulary injection to expand the number of meaning representations in the utterance meaning model and/or the understanding model, increasing the likelihood of matches being located during a meaning search operation. Additionally, the taxonomy lookup sources can be leveraged by the NLU system to enable validation of sample utterances submitted for inclusion in the intent-entity model.