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Amharic Question Answering for Biography, Definition, and Description Questions

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Book cover Information and Communication Technology for Development for Africa (ICT4DA 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1026))

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Abstract

A broad range of information needs can often be stated as a question. Question Answering (QA) systems attempt to provide users concise answer(s) to natural language questions. The existing Amharic QA systems handle fact-based questions that usually take named entities as an answer. To deal with more complex information needs we developed an Amharic non-factoid QA for biography, definition, and description questions. A hybrid approach has been used for the question classification. For document filtering and answer extraction we have used lexical patterns. On the other hand to answer biography questions we have used a summarizer and the generated summary is validated using a text classifier. Our QA system is evaluated and has shown a promising result.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://am.wikipedia.org/wiki/ .

  2. 2.

    HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility, http://www.httrack.com.

  3. 3.

    http://lucene.apache.org/core/.

  4. 4.

    http://svmlight.joachims.org/.

  5. 5.

    In a biography question an entity may represent different persons/ organizations. To resolve this, our system classifies the filtered documents to different categories and merges the documents in each category separately.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kotebe Metropolitan University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Tilahun Abedissa

  2. Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Mulugeta Libsie

Authors
  1. Tilahun Abedissa
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  2. Mulugeta Libsie
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Correspondence to Mulugeta Libsie .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Meraka ICT Institute, Pretoria, South Africa

    Fisseha Mekuria

  2. Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Ethiopia Nigussie

  3. ICT4D Research Center, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar , Ethiopia

    Tesfa Tegegne

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Abedissa, T., Libsie, M. (2019). Amharic Question Answering for Biography, Definition, and Description Questions. In: Mekuria, F., Nigussie, E., Tegegne, T. (eds) Information and Communication Technology for Development for Africa. ICT4DA 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1026. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26630-1_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26630-1_26

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26629-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26630-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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