Patent Document ID: 8301438
Application ID: 12765990

Base Claim:
1. A computer implemented method for selecting an answer to a natural language question, comprising the steps of: detecting a named entity in the natural language question; extracting information related to an answer from the natural language question; searching in linked data according to the detected named entity; generating at least one candidate answer according to a search result; parsing the candidate answer according to the information related to the answer; obtaining a value of a feature of the candidate answer; and evaluating each candidate answer by synthesizing the value of the feature of the candidate answer thereby selecting the answer to the natural language question; wherein the step of searching in linked data according to the detected named entity comprises: searching for a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), matching to the named entity in the linked data based on similarity; and searching with spreading activation, for a URI linked to the URI matching to the named entity by using linking relationship between URIs; and generating the candidate answer according to the linked URI; wherein the candidate answer is a label contained in the URI; and wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a processor device.

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Claim 5:
5. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising merging candidate answers retrieved from different linked data according to the feature of the candidate answers.