Confidence ranking of answers based on temporal semantics

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:

• responsive to receiving an input question, identify a set of candidate answers from a knowledge domain based on a correlation between an identified one or more predicates and an identified one or more arguments associated with the one or more predicates from the input question;
• associate an initial confidence score with each candidate answer of the set of candidate answers;
• refine each initial confidence score associated with each candidate answer based on a set of temporal characteristics identified in the input question, wherein each confidence score associated with each candidate answer is refined based on the set of temporal characteristics using a reference time of the input question and a respective reference time associated with the candidate answer thereby forming a temporally refined confidence score associated with the candidate answer, wherein the temporally refined confidence score associated with the candidate answer is identified by:
• generating a distance value in terms of years for the respective reference time associated with the candidate answer and the reference time of the input question;
• using the distance value, determining a multiplier value with which to weight the confidence score associated with the candidate answer using multiplier function:
• multiplier value=1/(2*distance value+0.5);
• identifying a sentiment value of the candidate answer to weight the determined multiplier value either positively or negatively;
• and
• providing a final weight for the temporally refined confidence score associated with the candidate answer using distance function:
• final weight=initial confidence score*multiplier value*sentiment value;
• and
• provide a set of candidate answers with the temporally refined confidence scores to the user.