Query disambiguation in a question-answering environment

A system for query disambiguation in a question-answering environment, the system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by the processor to cause the system to:
• identify, using a first natural language processing technique, a first set of word clusters in a first candidate answer generated in response to a first input query for a question-answering system, the first set of word clusters including a first word cluster, each of the first set of word clusters classified according to a syntactic element of a first set of syntactic elements;
• identify, using the first natural language processing technique, in the first input query, a second set of word clusters, each of the second set of word clusters classified according to a syntactic element of a second set of syntactic elements;
• determine, by comparing the first and second sets of syntactic elements, that the first word cluster is classified according to a first syntactic element that is not present in the second set of syntactic elements;
• and
• generate, using a second natural language processing technique, a second input query using the first input query and the first word cluster.

A computer program product for query disambiguation in a question-answering environment, the computer program product comprising a 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:

• identifying, by the computer, using a first natural language processing technique, a first set of word clusters in a first candidate answer generated in response to a first input query for a question-answering system, the first set of word clusters including a first word cluster, each of the first set of word clusters classified according to a syntactic element of a first set of syntactic elements;
• identifying, by the computer, using the first natural language processing technique, in the first input query, a second set of word clusters, each of the second set of word clusters classified according to a syntactic element of a second set of syntactic elements;
• determining, by the computer, by comparing the first and second sets of syntactic elements, that the first word cluster is classified according to a first syntactic element that is not present in the second set of syntactic elements;
• and
• generating, by the computer, using a second natural language processing technique, a second input query using the input query and the first word cluster.