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Implementing clarification dialogues in open domain question answering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2005

MARCO DE BONI
Affiliation:
School of Computing, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds LS2 3QS, UK e-mail: m.deboni@leedsmet.ac.uk
SURESH MANANDHAR
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK e-mail: suresh@cs.york.ac.uk

Abstract

We examine the implementation of clarification dialogues, a mechanism for ensuring that question answering systems take into account user goals by allowing them to ask series of related questions either by refining or expanding on previous questions with follow-up questions, in the context of open domain Question Answering systems. We develop an algorithm for clarification dialogue recognition through the analysis of collected data on clarification dialogues and examine the importance of clarification dialogue recognition for question answering. The algorithm is evaluated and shown to successfully recognize the start and continuation of clarification dialogues in 94% of cases. We then show the usefulness of the algorithm by demonstrating how the recognition of clarification dialogues can simplify the task of answer retrieval.

Type
Papers
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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