International Business Machines Corporation
Sub-Question Result Merging in Question and Answer (QA) Systems

Abstract:

An input question enhancement mechanism is provided for merging sub-question results in Question and Answer (QA) systems in order to answer an input question submitted from a user. A plurality of sub-questions associated with the input question is identified. Responsive to submitting the set of questions to a QA pipeline of the QA system, a set of answers and a set of passages related to the set of answers corresponding to each of the plurality of sub-questions are received. A mapping is applied to the set of passages to form a consolidated set of passages. The set of answers is then merged into the mapping so as to generate a consolidated set of answers. A factoid question response report is generated with answers from the consolidated set of answers and passages from the consolidated set of passages. The factoid question response report is then provided to the user.