Method for processing natural language questions and apparatus thereof

An apparatus for selecting an answer to a natural language question, comprising:

• a processor and a memory;
• wherein the processor includes:
• a question parsing module configured to detect a named entity in the natural language question and extract information related to an answer from the natural language question;
• a candidate answer generating module configured to search in linked data according to the detected named entity and generate a candidate answer according to a search result;
• a feature value generating module configured to parse the candidate answer according to the information related to the answer and obtain a value of a feature of the candidate answer;
• and
• a candidate answer evaluating module configured to evaluate each candidate answer by synthesizing the value of the feature of the candidate answer thereby selecting the answer to the natural language question;
• wherein the candidate answer generating module comprises:
• a matching unit, configured to search for a Uniform Resource Identifier, URI, matching to the named entity in the linked data based on similarity;
• a spreading activation unit, configured to search with spreading activation for a URI linked to the URI matching to the named entity by using linking relationship between URIs;
• and
• a candidate generating unit, configured to generate the candidate answer according to the linked URI;
• wherein the candidate generating unit uses a label contained in the URI as the candidate answer.