Evaluating temporal relevance in question answering

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• receive an input natural language question for answering by the QA system;
• analyze the input natural language question to identify a temporal focus of the input natural language question;
• process a corpus of documents based on the input natural language question to generate candidate answers to the input natural language question;
• process each candidate answer to identify at least one contextual temporal focus associated with the candidate answer;
• compare the at least one contextual temporal focus with the temporal focus of the input natural language question;
• generate a measure of temporal relevance of the candidate answer based on results of the comparison;
• and
• output a final answer to the input natural language question based on the measure of temporal relevance, wherein comparing the at least one contextual temporal focus with the temporal focus of the input natural language question comprises generating a score for the candidate answer based on a determined temporal proximity between the at least one contextual temporal focus and the temporal focus of the input natural language question.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• receive an input natural language question for answering by the QA system;
• analyze the input natural language question to identify a temporal focus of the input natural language question;
• process a corpus of documents based on the input natural language question to generate candidate answers to the input natural language question;
• process each candidate answer to identify at least one contextual temporal focus associated with the candidate answer;
• compare the at least one contextual temporal focus with the temporal focus of the input natural language question;
• generate a measure of temporal relevance of the candidate answer based on results of the comparison;
• and
• output a final answer to the input natural language question based on the measure of temporal relevance, wherein comparing the at least one contextual temporal focus with the temporal focus of the input natural language question comprises generating a score for the candidate answer based on a determined temporal proximity between the at least one contextual temporal focus and the temporal focus of the input natural language question.