Suggesting query terms

A computer program product for suggesting a query term, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform a method comprising:

• obtaining, by a processor device, a seed term and a candidate term;
• retrieving, by the processor device, two nodes indicating the seed term and the candidate term respectively from a semi-structured corpora, having a hierarchical structure of nodes grouped based on positional information that includes relationships between nodes based on syntax of the semi-structured corpora;
• determining, by the processor device, whether the candidate term includes details of information on the seed term based on a positional relation that includes an order based on positional information between the two nodes in the semi-structured corpora;
• suggesting, by the processor device, the candidate term as an additional query term in response to a positive determination;
• and
• performing, by the processor device, the query with the candidate term as the additional query term in response to a suggestion of use that has been accepted by a user to enhance query answer retrieval results.

A computer processing system for suggesting a query term, comprising:

• a memory device for storing program code;
• and
• a processor device operatively coupled to the memory device for storing program code to:
• obtain a seed term and a candidate term;
• retrieve two nodes indicating the seed term and the candidate term respectively from a semi-structured corpora, having a hierarchical structure of nodes grouped based on positional information that includes relationships between nodes based on syntax of the semi-structured corpora;
• determine whether the candidate term includes details of information on the seed term based on a positional relation that includes an order based on positional information between the two nodes in the semi-structured corpora;
• suggest the candidate term as an additional query term in response to a positive determination;
• and
• perform the query with the candidate term as the additional query term in response to a suggestion of use that has been accepted by a user to enhance query answer retrieval results.