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International Conference on Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language

PROPOR 2016: Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language pp 25–37Cite as

Improving Question-Answering for Portuguese Using Triples Extracted from Corpora

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9727))

Abstract

We present here an evolution of a QA system for Portuguese that uses subject-predicate-object triples extracted from sentences in a corpus. The system is supported by indices that store those triples, related sentences and documents. It processes the questions and retrieves answers based on the triples.

For purposes of testing and evaluation, we have used the CHAVE corpus, used in multiple editions of the CLEF multilingual QA tracks. The questions from those editions were used to query and benchmark our system. Currently, the system manages to answer up to 42 % of those questions. This document describes the modules that compose the system and how they are combined, providing a brief analysis on them, and also current results, as well as some expectations regarding future work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://incubator.apache.org/opennlp/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.linguateca.pt/floresta/BibliaFlorestal/completa.html.

  3. 3.

    Loosely translated as: “Mel Blanc, the man who lent his voice to the world’s most famous rabbit, Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.”.

  4. 4.

    Loosely translated as: “What was Mel Blanc allergic to?”.

  5. 5.

    In 2004, one of the questions was unintentionally duplicated, hence 599 and not 600.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Ricardo Rodrigues & Paulo Gomes

  2. College of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Ricardo Rodrigues

Authors
  1. Ricardo Rodrigues
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  2. Paulo Gomes
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Correspondence to Ricardo Rodrigues .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade de Lisbon, Portugal

    João Silva

  2. ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ricardo Ribeiro

  3. Universidade de Évora, Évora, Portugal

    Paulo Quaresma

  4. Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Caxias do Suö, Brazil

    André Adami

  5. Universidade de Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    António Branco

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Rodrigues, R., Gomes, P. (2016). Improving Question-Answering for Portuguese Using Triples Extracted from Corpora. In: Silva, J., Ribeiro, R., Quaresma, P., Adami, A., Branco, A. (eds) Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language. PROPOR 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9727. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41552-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41552-9_3

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