Efficient natural language data structure, persistence and querying

For use in a language-learning web application, do you know of data structures and underlying database schema/ layout that would allow efficient storage, processing and querying of sentences, verbs, nouns etc. for different natural languages? For example I would like to store each verb only once and link sentences to a verb object etc.

I came across concrete syntax trees and I am thinking of use an abstract Node class and derive Noun class from it etc. Would a syntax tree structure be too restrictive?

I realise this is quite a broad question and I do not expect you to do my 'homework' but if you could poin开发者_开发百科t me to any resources you know of that may help me get started that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Martijn

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Your example looks pretty solid in terms of natural language/sentences manipulation.

About other options.. for text search/storage, you might take a look at Patricia tree. There's implementation of it in Java on Google code.

Also, did you consider using one of existing solutions, like Hunspell, Lucene or Sphinx?