Question Answering

Abstract

Question Answering is an area of information retrieval with the added challenge of applying sophisticated techniques to identify the complex syntactic and semantic relationships present in text in order to provide a more sophisticated and satisfactory response to the user’s information needs. For this reason, the authors see question answering as the next step beyond standard information retrieval. In this chapter state of the art question answering is covered focusing on providing an overview of systems, techniques and approaches that are likely to be employed in the next generations of search engines. Special attention is paid to question answering using the World Wide Web as the data source and to question answering exploiting the possibilities of Semantic Web. Considerations about the current issues and prospects for promising future research are also provided.