11. An apparatus having: a memory; and a processor performing steps comprising: compiling a set of concordance lines for a set of terms in a corpus of text; storing a first set of verb-argument tuples and associated terms from the set of concordance lines; computing a numerical quantification of a strength of association between each verb-argument tuple and associated term in the first set; selecting, from the first set, each verb-argument tuple and associated term whose numerical quantification of strength of association is greater than a predetermined threshold, wherein the selected verb-argument tuples and associated terms form a set of tuple-term pairs representing most likely actions associated with the set of terms; identifying each tuple-term pair in the set of tuple-term pairs having a verb 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; and storing the identified set of tuple-term pairs in the memory.
12. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the computation of the numerical quantification of the strength of association comprises: computing a ratio of a likelihood of a first and a second hypothesis, wherein: the first hypothesis indicates that a probability of the verb-argument tuple occurring given the associated term is indistinguishable from a probability of the verb-argument tuple occurring given something other than the associated term, and the second hypothesis indicates that the probability of the verb-argument tuple occurring given the associated term is distinguishable from the probability of the verb-argument tuple occurring given something other than the associated term.