Search

Using computers to answer natural language questions is an interesting and challenging problem. Generally such problems are handled under two categories: open domain problems and close domain problems. This paper presents a system that attempts to solve close domain problems. Typically, in a close domain, answers to questions are not available in the public domain and therefore they cannot be searched using a search engine. Hence answers have to be stored in a database by a domain expert. Then, the challenge is to understand the natural language question so that the solution could be matched to the respective answer in the database. We use a template matching technique to perform this matching. In addition, given that our target is to use this system with non-native English speakers, we developed a method to overcome the mismatches we might encounter due to spelling mistakes. The system is developed such that the questions can be asked using short messages from a mobile phone and therefore the system is designed to understand SMS language in addition to English. One of the main contributions of this paper is the outcome presented of a deployment of this system in a real environment.