PHLIQA 1: Multilevel Semantics in Question Answering (original) (raw)

This paper outlinee a recently implemented que~tion answering system , called PHLIQA 1 , which answers English questions about a data base . Unlike other existing aysteme , that directly tramlate a syntactic deep structure into a program to be executed, PHLIQA 1 leads a question through several intermediate etages of semantic analysis . In every stage the question is represented a0 an expression of a formal language, The paper describes aome features of the Languages that are &uc~essivelg used during the analyeis process : the English-oriented Formal Language , the World Model Language and the Data Base Language . Next , we ahow the separate conversion steps that can be distinguished in the process. We indicate the problems that are handled by these conversions , and that are often neglected in other systems.