Knowledge-based question answering

Large amounts of technical documentation are available in machine readable form, however there is a lack of effective ways to access them. In this paper we propose an approach based on linguistic techniques, geared towards the creation of a domain-specific Knowledge Base, starting from the available technical documentation. We then discuss an effective way to access the information encoded in the Knowledge Base. Given a user question phrased in natural language the system is capable of retrieving the encoded semantic information that most closely matches the user input, and present it by highlighting the textual elements that were used to deduct it.