Going beyond traditional QA systems: challenges and keys in opinion question answering

The treatment of factual data has been widely studied in different areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP). However, processing subjective information still poses important challenges. This paper presents research aimed at assessing techniques that have been suggested as appropriate in the context of subjective - Opinion Question Answering (OQA). We evaluate the performance of an OQA with these new components and propose methods to optimally tackle the issues encountered. We assess the impact of including additional resources and processes with the purpose of improving the system performance on two distinct blog datasets. The improvements obtained for the different combination of tools are statistically significant. We thus conclude that the proposed approach is adequate for the OQA task, offering a good strategy to deal with opinionated questions.

A knowledge-based textual entailment approach applied to the QA answer validation at CLEF 2006

The Answer Validation Exercise (AVE) is a pilot track within the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) 2006. The AVE competition provides an evaluation frame- work for answer validations in Question Answering (QA). In our participation in AVE, we propose a system that has been initially used for other task as Recognising Textual Entailment (RTE). The aim of our participation is to evaluate the improvement our system brings to QA. Moreover, due to the fact that these two task (AVE and RTE) have the same main idea, which is to find semantic implications between two fragments of text, our system has been able to be directly applied to the AVE competition. Our system is based on the representation of the texts by means of logic forms and the computation of semantic comparison between them. This comparison is carried out using two different approaches. The first one managed by a deeper study of the Word- Net relations, and the second uses the measure defined by Lin in order to compute the semantic similarity between the logic form predicates. Moreover, we have also designed a voting strategy between our system and the MLEnt system, also presented by the University of Alicante, with the aim of obtaining a joint execution of the two systems developed at the University of Alicante. Although the results obtained have not been very high, we consider that they are quite promising and this supports the fact that there is still a lot of work on researching in any kind of textual entailment.

AliQAn, Spanish QA system at multilingual QA@CLEF-2008

Comunicación presentada en Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2008), Aarhus, Denmark, September 17-19, 2008.

Hādhā Majmūʻ muzdawijāt badīʻah mustaghribāt wa-qaṣāʼid ghazalīyāt ẓarīfah mustaḥsanāt turawwiḥu qulūb al-ʻushshāq wa-yaḥinnu ilayhā ṭaraban kull mushtāq

jamʻ Maḥmūd Afandī al-Jazāʼirī.

Hādhā mukhtaṣar kitāb Qaṭf al-azhār min al-Khiṭaṭ wa-al-āthār, mukhtaṣar al-Khiṭaṭ lil-Maqrīzī / lil-Shaykh al-Imām al-ʻĀlim al-ʻAllāmah ... Sibṭ Āl al-Ṣiddīq Mawlānā Abū al-Surūr al-Ṣiddīqī al-Bakrī : manuscript, undated

Written in several hands, in one column, from 17 to 25 lines per page, in black ink, framed within double red lines.

Sharḥ-i Qaṣīdah-ʼi Burdah : manuscript, 1661

Written in one column, 19 lines per page, in black rubricated in red. Portions of text underlined or punctuated in red

Sharḥ-i Qaṣīdah-ʼi Burdah : manuscript, undated

According to colophon (f. 64v), copy completed in the hand of Fatḥ Muḥammad walad Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh Sahrandī (?) on Muḥarram 25 (the year is not given).

Sharḥ-i Qaṣīdah-ʼi Burdah : manuscript, undated

Written in one column, 13 lines per page, in black ink.

Sharḥ Qaṣīdat Kaʻb ibn Zuhayr al-maʻrūfah bi-Bānat Suʻād / ikhtaṣarahu Sayyidunā al-Shaykh al-Imām al-ʻAllāmah Zayn al-Dīn ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Khalīl al-Khaṭīb bi-ʻAyn al-Zaytūn min sharḥ Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Hishām : manuscript

1498.

Shams al-hidāyah li-tidhkār ahl al-nihāyah wa-irshād ahl al-bidāyah: wa-hiya risālah fī al-qaḍāʼ ʻalá al-madhāhib al-arbaʻah

taʼlīf ʻAbd al-Qādir al-Shafshāwanī.

Hādhihi qaṣīdah jāmiʻah li-ghālib aḥwāl yawm al-qiyāmah wa-ismuhā Qilādat al-durr al-manthūr fī dhikr al-baʻth wa-al-nushūr : manuscript, undated

Paginated 1-5 in pencil in Arabic numerals.

Hādhihi al-qaṣīdah al-musammāh bi-Lāmīyat al-ʻajam / lil-Ṭughrāʼī : manuscript, 1567

With this is bound: Sharḥ al-Muthallathah (ff. 3v-4v) -- A poem (ff. 5v-6r) -- Muwashshaḥ fī al-naḥw / al-Suyūṭī (ff. 6v-10r) -- Qaṣīdat al-Shuhd / al-Suyūṭī (ff. 10v-11r) -- A poem (f. 11v) -- al-Tuḥaf wa-al-ṭuraf (ff. 12r-24v) -- al-Murūr bayna al-ʻalamayn ilá mufākharat al-Ḥaramayn / ʻAlī ibn Yūsuf al-Zarandī (ff. 24v-45v) -- Khuṭbat tafsīr / lil-Ḥusayn ibn Masʻūd al-Baghāwī (ff. 46v-52r) -- Prayers (ff. 52v-54r).

Sharḥ Qaṣīdat Yaqūlu al-ʻabd : manuscript, undated

Bound with: Baḥr al-kalām fī ʻilm al-tawḥīd / lil-Shaykh al-Imām Abū al-Muʻīn al-Nasafī (ff. 1v-25r).

Qaṣīdah fī ʻilm al-ʻaqāyid : manuscript, undated

Bound with: Baḥr al-kalām fī ʻilm al-tawḥīd / lil-Shaykh al-Imām Abū al-Muʻīn al-Nasafī (ff. 1v-25r).

Qaṣīdah / li-Abī al-Fatḥ al-Bustī : manuscript, undated

Bound with: Baḥr al-kalām fī ʻilm al-tawḥīd / lil-Shaykh al-Imām Abū al-Muʻīn al-Nasafī (ff. 1v-25r).