Automatic Question-Answering of English-Like Questions About Simple Diagrams

Abstract : This paper presents a technique for translating certain English-like questions into procedures for answering them in order to explore how large a class of basic question types can be so processed. The English-like questions all pertain to simple diagrams built of elementary figures with relations like 'above' and 'larger than.' The input to the program into which the algorithm presented here could be implemented are questions such as 'Is it true that in Fig. 1 each triangle is above a circle,' and may include terms like 'how,' 'when,' 'what,' in an interesting variety of interrogative sentence types. The output of the program is a flow diagram for another program to answer the question by inference and search of a structured data base in which representations of diagrams are stored. The English-like source language of questions that the algorithm can process, though restricted and fixed in syntax and domain of discourse, has a potentially wide scope in that it includes some of the fundamental question types.

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