A method, system, and a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for processing an input string to generate a fractal semantic network. The fractal semantic network is obtained by parsing the input string to generate an initial parse structure which comprises a plurality of parse elements. Semantic units are generated from some of the parse elements by employing a set of mapping rules for mapping certain types of parse elements into the semantic units such that some of the semantic units are information objects and some are connection objects. The fractal semantic network is generated by arranging the information objects and connection objects in a fractal manner, where the relation between the information objects is represented by the connection objects. The information objects and the connection objects are derived from a small set of basic building blocks.