Providing question and answers with deferred type evaluation using text with limited structure
First Claim
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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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.
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Citations
21 Claims
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1. A computer-implemented method for automatically generating answers to questions comprising the steps of:
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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 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. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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Specification