1. A computer-implemented method of generating a set of tuple-term pairs from a corpus of text, comprising: compiling via a processor concordance lines associated with terms in the corpus; identifying a set of verb-argument tuples and associated terms from the concordance lines; selecting from the set each verb-argument tuple and associated term having a computed numerical quantification of strength of association greater than a threshold, wherein the selected verb-argument tuples and associated terms represent most likely actions associated with the terms; and storing in a database each tuple-term pair in the set of tuple-term pairs that matches a verb in a sentence input to a text-to-scene conversion system that constructs an arbitrary three-dimensional scene from input text without using previously stored images.