21. A method in a computer system for assessing the strength of an input semantic relation comprising two input words and an input relation type relating the input words, comprising: identifying a salient semantic relation having the input relation type and relating one of the input words to an intermediate word other than the other input word; determining the weight of the identified semantic relation; generating a quantitative measure of the similarity of the intermediate word and the other input word; and generating a confidence weight for the input semantic relation based upon both the generated quantitative measure of the similarity of the intermediate word and the other input word and the determined weight of the identified semantic relation determined.
21. A method in a computer system for assessing the strength of an input semantic relation comprising two input words and an input relation type relating the input words, comprising: identifying a salient semantic relation having the input relation type and relating one of the input words to an intermediate word other than the other input word; determining the weight of the identified semantic relation; generating a quantitative measure of the similarity of the intermediate word and the other input word; and generating a confidence weight for the input semantic relation based upon both the generated quantitative measure of the similarity of the intermediate word and the other input word and the determined weight of the identified semantic relation determined. 23. The method of claim 21, further comprising determining the path weight of an artificial path comprising the identified semantic relation and a special semantic relation characterizing the level of similarity of the intermediate word and the other input word, and wherein the generating step generates a confidence weight based on the determined path weights.