Question Analysis and Answering Procedural Questions Ling Yin, ITRI, University of Brighton, Ling'Yi

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Question Analysis and Answering Procedural
QuestionsLing Yin, ITRI, University of Brighton,
Ling.Yin_at_itri.bton.ac.uk
Answering Procedural
Questions Procedural Questions 1. How to turn on
the light? ? What is the ltproceduregt for ltturning
on the lightgt? 2. When to take Aspirin? ? What
are the ltpreconditionsgt for lttaking Aspiringt? 3.
Why should we take Aspirin? ? What is the
ltpurposegt of lttaking Aspiringt?
Question Analysis How
does a question identify relevant
information? Questions are formulated before the
questioner know the answers. At the same time, as
a device for seeking relevant information,
questions should somehow depict the information
required. Questions fulfill this task by
providing a generalised form of the detailed
information. General form of a WH-question Many
questions can be transformed into the following
formats What is the ltPart1gt of
ltPart2gt? e.g. what is the
ltanatomygt of ltjawgt? What is the ltPart1gt
that ltPart2gt? e.g. what is the
ltsolutiongt that ltyou have for this problemgt?
What is the ltPart1gt for ltPart2gt?
e.g. what is the lttreatmentgt for ltsmallpoxgt?
The concepts in Part1 provide a general
characterisation of the required information,
while the concepts in Part2 refer to some
specific and presupposed entities or facts. Part2
identifies something already known, Part1
represents the general nature of the unknown.
Therefore, we call Part1 the generic part and
part2 the specific part. What is the above
discussion applied to? The above structural
analysis of questions can benefit knowledge
organization in defining knowledge classes. In a
network of related entities and facts, a specific
part points out a focus entity or fact, and the
generic part selects a range of further facts
around it. In the answer to a question, the
generic part in the question will be replaced by
detailed information, while the specific part ,
since it denotes a context, will be kept.
Therefore, in the context of automatic
information retrieval (IR) and question answering
(QA), bridging the gap between the generic part
and detailed information should be treated
differently from retrieving the keywords in the
specific part. We are not aware of any other work
that explicitly makes this point.
Procedural modelplan for switching on the light
After (Delin et.al., 1994)
The specific part of the first question ----
turning on the light ---- corresponds to a
particular status or action in the above plan,
while the generic part of the question ----
procedure ---- requires all the above actions
and states and relationships between them. To
bridge the gap between concept procedure and
the detailed information so as to locate answers
for the above question, the first stage would be
recognizing actions and statuses and the low
level relationships between them such as
precondition and constraint.