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International Conference on Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods

TABLEAUX 2002: Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods pp 251–265Cite as

Question Answering: From Partitions to Prolog

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2381))

Abstract

We implement Groenendijk and Stokhof’s partition semantics of questions in a simple question answering algorithm. The algorithm is sound, complete, and based on tableau theorem proving. The algorithm relies on a syntactic characterization of answerhood: Any answer to a question is equivalent to some formula built up only from instances of the question. We prove this characterization by translating the logic of interrogation to classical predicate logic and applying Craig’s interpolation theorem.

We would like to thank Patrick Blackburn, Paul Dekker, Jeroen Groenendijk, Maarten Marx, Stuart Shieber, and the anonymous referees for their useful comments and discussions. The 13th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, the 13th Amsterdam Colloquium, and Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information provided stimulating environments that led to this collaboration. The second author is supported by the United States National Science Foundation under Grant IRI-9712068.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, 1012 CP, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Balder ten Cate

  2. Division of Applied and Engineering Sciences, Harvard University, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Chung-chieh Shan

Authors
  1. Balder ten Cate
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  2. Chung-chieh Shan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Abteilung Wisssenbasierte Systeme 184/3, Technische Univesität Wien, Favoritenstr. 9-11, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Uwe Egly

  2. Institut für Computersprachen AG Theoretische Informatik und Logik 185.2, Technische Universität Wien, Favoritenstr. 9-11, 1040, Vienna, Austria

    Chritian G. Fermüller

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ten Cate, B., Shan, Cc. (2002). Question Answering: From Partitions to Prolog. In: Egly, U., Fermüller, C.G. (eds) Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods. TABLEAUX 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2381. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45616-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45616-3_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43929-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45616-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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