Patent ID: 8838659

Claim:
A knowledge representation system, comprising: a data store having a knowledge base stored therein comprising knowledge represented in a structured, machine-readable format which encodes meaning and is distinct from natural language, the structured, machine-readable format including entity objects, each of at least some of the entity objects being explicitly associated in the knowledge base with at least one of a plurality of knowledge domains; and at least one computing device configured to: translate a natural language question to a plurality of queries, the natural language question being associated with a first knowledge domain of the plurality of knowledge domains, each of the plurality of queries being a machine-readable representation of a possible translation of the natural language question that is compatible with the structured, machine-readable format of the knowledge base; determine whether any of the queries relate to the first knowledge domain by determining if there are any named entities in the queries that correspond to entity objects that are associated with the first knowledge domain in the knowledge base, thereby identifying a first subset of the queries; determine whether any of the first subset of the queries represents a corresponding interpretation of the natural language question that belongs to the first knowledge domain, thereby identifying a second subset of the queries; and respond to the natural language question using a portion of the knowledge within the first knowledge domain by processing the second subset of the queries that relate to the first knowledge domain with reference to the knowledge base.