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An automatic answering system with template matching for natural language questions

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.