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Providing question and answers with deferred type evaluation using text with limited structure

  • US 9,798,800 B2
  • Filed: 09/21/2011
  • Issued: 10/24/2017
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2010
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A computer-implemented method for automatically generating answers to questions comprising the steps of:

  • 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 indicated by said markup, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list comprises;

    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 for each determined item-delimiter mark-up item;

    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 extracted 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 created 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;

    wherein a hardware processor automatically performs one or more of said steps.

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