Providing question and answers with deferred type evaluation using text with limited structure
First Claim
1. A system for automatically generating answers to questions, said system comprising:
- a memory storage device;
one or more hardware processors, each operatively connected to said memory device and configured to;
analyze a corpus of documents to identify a document containing a list, wherein said list contains item-delimiting markup;
parse said list to identify type information and entities in said list, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list, said one or more hardware processors are further configured to;
extract a type from a title indicating said list;
determine a presence of item-delimeter mark-up associated with said list, each mark-up delimeter including or not including one or more associated hyperlinks, and if a hyperlink is included;
obtain an instance of a hyperlink in closest proximity to the mark-up item-delimeter, and extracting an entity from a target of said hyperlink instance; and
if a hyperlink is not included;
use an annotator to identify phrases included in text associated with the item-delimeter mark-up, and extract a most salient phrase as said entity;
create entity-type pairs, wherein said entity-type pairs comprise said entities and the identified type from said list;
receive a lexical answer type associated with an input query;
receive a candidate answer to said query;
determine whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said entity-type pairs;
for any associated entity-type pairs, comparing said extracted type in said associated entity-type pair with said lexical answer type;
generate a type-matching score, wherein said type-matching score is indicative of a quality of said obtained candidate answer based on matching types; and
use said type-matching score to evaluate said candidate answer as an answer to said query.
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Abstract
A system, method and computer program product for conducting questions and answers with deferred type evaluation based on any corpus of data. The method includes processing a query including waiting until a “Type” (i.e. a descriptor) is determined AND a candidate answer is provided. Then, a search is conducted to look (search) for evidence that the candidate answer has the required Lexical Answer Type (e.g., as determined by a matching function that can leverage a parser, a semantic interpreter and/or a simple pattern matcher). Prior to or during candidate answer evaluation, a process is provided for extracting and storing collections of entity-type pairs from semi-structured text documents. During QA processing and candidate answer scoring, a process is implemented to match the query LAT against the lexical type of each provided candidate answer and generate a score judging a degree of match.
80 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A system for automatically generating answers to questions, said system comprising:
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a memory storage device; one or more hardware processors, each operatively connected to said memory device and configured to; analyze a corpus of documents to identify a document containing a list, wherein said list contains item-delimiting markup; parse said list to identify type information and entities in said list, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list, said one or more hardware processors are further configured to; extract a type from a title indicating said list; determine a presence of item-delimeter mark-up associated with said list, each mark-up delimeter including or not including one or more associated hyperlinks, and if a hyperlink is included; obtain an instance of a hyperlink in closest proximity to the mark-up item-delimeter, and extracting an entity from a target of said hyperlink instance; and if a hyperlink is not included; use an annotator to identify phrases included in text associated with the item-delimeter mark-up, and extract a most salient phrase as said entity; create entity-type pairs, wherein said entity-type pairs comprise said entities and the identified type from said list; receive a lexical answer type associated with an input query; receive a candidate answer to said query; determine whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said entity-type pairs; for any associated entity-type pairs, comparing said extracted type in said associated entity-type pair with said lexical answer type; generate a type-matching score, wherein said type-matching score is indicative of a quality of said obtained candidate answer based on matching types; and use said type-matching score to evaluate said candidate answer as an answer to said query. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A computer program product for automatically generating answers to questions, the computer program device comprising a non-transitory storage medium, said medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions run by the processing circuit for performing a method, the method comprising:
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analyzing a corpus of documents to identify a document containing a list, wherein said list contains item-delimiting markup; parsing said list to identify type information and entities in said list, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list, said processing circuit further performs; extracting a type from a title indicating said list; determining a presence of item-delimeter mark-up associated with said list, each mark-up delimeter including or not including one or more associated hyperlinks, and if a hyperlink is included; obtaining an instance of a hyperlink in closest proximity to the mark-up item-delimeter, and extracting an entity from a target of said hyperlink instance; and if a hyperlink is not included; using an annotator to identify phrases included in text associated with the item-delimeter mark-up, and extracting a most salient phrase as said entity; creating entity-type pairs, wherein said entity-type pairs comprise said entities and the identified type from said list; receiving a lexical answer type associated with an input query; receiving a candidate answer to said query; determining whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said entity-type pairs; for any associated entity-type pairs, comparing said extracted type in said associated entity-type pair with said lexical answer type; generating a type-matching score, wherein said type-matching score is indicative of a quality of said obtained candidate answer based on matching types; and using said type-matching score to evaluate said candidate answer as an answer to said query. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification