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Semantic computation in a Chinese Question-Answering system

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Abstract

This paper introduces a kind of semantic computation and presents how to combine it into our Chinese Question-Answering (QA) system. Based on two kinds of language resources,Hownet andCilin, we present an approach to computing the similarity and relevancy between words. Using these results, we can calculate the relevancy between two sentences and then get the optimal answer for the query in the system. The calculation adopts quantitative methods and can be incorporated into QA systems easily, avoiding some difficulties in conventional NLP (Natural Language Processing) problems. The experiments show that the results are satisfactory.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

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Correspondence to Li Sujian.

Additional information

This work is supported by the NKBRSF of China (Grant Nos.G1998030510, G1998030507-4).

LI Sujian received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Shandong University of Technology in 1996 and in 1999 respectively. And she received her Ph.D. degree in computer science from Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2002. She is now a postdoctor in the Institute of Computational Linguistics, Peking University. Her current research interests include machine translation, information extraction, and machine learning.

ZHANG Jian received his B.S. degree in physical oceanography from the Ocean University of Qingdao, China in 1998, and his M.S. degree in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. Now he is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include machine learning, information retrieval and data mining.

HUANG Xiong received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Peking University in 1992 and 1995 respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1999. From May, 1999 to May, 2001 he conducted research in the Institute of Computing Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. His major interests lie in analysis and design of combinatorial algorithms, computational complexity, Web information retrieval and Web application development.

BAI Shuo received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Peking University in 1987 and 1990 respectively. Then he conducted research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Mathematics Department of Peking University. He has published more than 60 papers in refereed journals and conferences. His research interests are computational linguistics, natural language processing and network security.

LIU Qun is an associate professor in the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1989 and his M.S. degree in computer science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1992. He is pursuing his Ph.D. degree in computer science in Peking University from 1999 till now. His research interests include machine translation, natural language processing and Chinese information processing.

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Li, S., Zhang, J., Huang, X. et al. Semantic computation in a Chinese Question-Answering system. J. Compt. Sci. & Technol. 17, 933–939 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02960786

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02960786

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