Question sentence generating device and computer program

A question sentence generating device for use with a question-answering system, wherein:

• said question-answering system includes:
• a non-factoid type question-answering sub-system responsive to a non-factoid type question, wherein the non-factoid type question-answering sub-system is configured to:
• extract a plurality of passages as answer sentence candidates from a corpus,
• calculate a score for each passage, said score indicating fitness as an answer to said given question;
• and
• output an answer sentence candidate having the highest score as an answer to said given question;
• said question sentence generating device comprising:
• a memory including a question sentence database configured to store a plurality of question sentences each generated from any passage in said corpus and having as an answer a passage as a source of generating the question sentence;
• an interface configured to receive a word or a word sequence;
• and
• a processor configured to generate and output a new question sentence from the received word or word sequence as the source of generating the question sentence or synonyms or entailments of these and from a question sentence stored in said question sentence database by referring to said question sentence database.

A computer program stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium causing a computer to function as a question sentence generating device for use with a question-answering system, wherein said computer is connected to a question sentence generating database comprising a plurality of records for generating question sentences, each of said plurality of records having a key word and is generated from an answer having an answer sentence pattern co-occurring with the word, wherein, when executed by a processor, said computer program causes said processor to:

• receive a word or a word sequence as a source for generating a question sentence;
• and
• search and retrieve from said question sentence generating database an answer sentence pattern using a key consisting of the received word;
• generate a question sentence from the retrieved answer sentence pattern and said received word, comprising:
• generating question candidates by (1) transforming the retrieved answer sentence pattern into a plurality of question patterns and (2) combining each of the plurality of question patterns with the received word;
• scoring each of the question candidates, wherein the score indicates a fit of each question sentence candidate as being a question having as an answer the answer from which the answer sentence pattern is generated;
• and
• selecting as the question sentence the question sentence candidate having a best score;
• and;
• and
• output the generated question sentence.