Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Pythia: Compositional Meaning Construction for Ontology-Based Question Answering on the Semantic Web

  • Conference paper
Natural Language Processing and Information Systems (NLDB 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 6716))

Abstract

In this paper we present the ontology-based question answering system Pythia. It compositionally constructs meaning representations using a vocabulary aligned to the vocabulary of a given ontology. In doing so it relies on a deep linguistic analysis, which allows to construct formal queries even for complex natural language questions (e.g. involving quantification and superlatives).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Bunt, H.: Semantic Underspecification: Which Technique For What Purpose? In: Computing Meaning, vol. 83, pp. 55–85. Springer, Netherlands (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Cimiano, P.: Flexible semantic composition with DUDES. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computational Semantics, IWCS, Tilburg (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Cimiano, P., Buitelaar, P., McCrae, J., Sintek, M.: Lexinfo: A declarative model for the lexicon-ontology interface. Journal of Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 9(1), 29–51

    Google Scholar 

  4. Unger, C., Hieber, F., Cimiano, P.: Generating LTAG grammars from a lexicon-ontology interface. In: Bangalore, S., Frank, R., Romero, M. (eds.) 10th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+10). Yale University, New Haven and London (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Schabes, Y.: Mathematical and Computational Aspects of Lexicalized Grammars. Ph. D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Reyle, U.: Dealing with ambiguities by underspecification: Construction, representation and deduction. Journal of Semantics 10, 123–179 (1993)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Schabes, Y., Joshi, A.K.: An Earley-type parsing algorithm for Tree Adjoining Grammars. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of ACL, Buffalo, New York, pp. 258–269 (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Kamp, H., Reyle, U.: From Discourse to Logic. Kluwer, Dordrecht (1993)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Kifer, M., Lausen, G.: F-logic: A higher-order language for reasoning about objects, inheritance, and scheme. Technical report, SIGMOD Record 18(2) (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Decker, S., Erdmann, M., Fensel, D., Studer, R.: Ontobroker: Ontology based access to distributed and semi-structured information. Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems, 351–369 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Minock, M.: C-Phrase: A system for building robust natural language interfaces to databases. Data Knowl. Eng. 69(3), 290–302 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Minock, M., Olofsson, P., Näslund, A.: Towards building robust natural language interfaces to databases. In: Kapetanios, E., Sugumaran, V., Spiliopoulou, M. (eds.) NLDB 2008. LNCS, vol. 5039, pp. 187–198. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Mooney, R.: Learning for semantic parsing. In: Gelbukh, A. (ed.) CICLing 2007. LNCS, vol. 4394, pp. 311–324. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Popescu, A.-M., Etzioni, O., Kautz, H.: Towards a theory of natural language interfaces to databases. In: IUI 2003: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 149–157. ACM, New York (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Schiehlen, M.: Semantic Construction from Parse Forests. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Copenhagen (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cimiano, P., Minock, M.: Natural Language Interfaces: What Is the Problem? – A Data-Driven Quantitative Analysis. In: Horacek, H., Métais, E., Muñoz, R., Wolska, M. (eds.) NLDB 2009. LNCS, vol. 5723, pp. 192–206. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany

    Christina Unger & Philipp Cimiano

Authors
  1. Christina Unger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Philipp Cimiano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, University of Alicante, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    Rafael Muñoz

  2. Department of Software and Computing Systems, University of Alicante, Aptdo. de Correos 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    Andrés Montoyo

  3. CNAM- Laboratoire Cédric, 292 Rue St. Martin, 75141, Paris Cedex 03, France

    Elisabeth Métais

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Unger, C., Cimiano, P. (2011). Pythia: Compositional Meaning Construction for Ontology-Based Question Answering on the Semantic Web. In: Muñoz, R., Montoyo, A., Métais, E. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Information Systems. NLDB 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6716. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22327-3_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22327-3_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22326-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22327-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation