Natural Language Question-Answering Systems: 1969 Recent experiments in programming natural language question-answering systems are reviewed to summarize the methods that have been developed for syntactic, semantic, and logical analysis of English strings. It is concluded that at least minimally effective techniques have been devised for answering questions from natural language subsets in small scale experimental systems and that a useful paradigm has evolved to guide research efforts in the field. Current approaches to semantic analysis and logical inference are seen to be effective beginnings but of questionable generality with respect either to subtle aspects of meaning or to applications over large subsets of English. Generalizing from current small-scale experiments to language-processing systems based on dictionaries with thousands of entries-with correspondingly large grammars and semantic systems-may entail a new order of complexity and require the invention and development of entirely different approaches to semantic analysis and questions answering. CACM January, 1970 Simmons, R. F. question-answering, natural language, artificial intelligence,language processing, fact retrieval, semantics 3.6 3.64 3.7 3.74 CA700104 JB February 14, 1978 2:10 PM 1155 4 2127 1400 4 2127 1456 4 2127 1468 4 2127 1515 4 2127 1515 4 2127 1553 4 2127 1665 4 2127 1699 4 2127 1768 4 2127 1787 4 2127 1824 4 2127 1825 4 2127 1836 4 2127 1856 4 2127 1861 4 2127 1945 4 2127 2015 4 2127 2096 4 2127 2092 4 2127 2110 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2127 4 2127 2187 4 2127 2210 4 2127 2309 4 2127 2310 4 2127 2317 4 2127 2396 4 2127 2396 4 2127 2545 4 2127 2698 4 2127 2730 4 2127 2733 4 2127 1155 5 2127 1324 5 2127 1487 5 2127 1527 5 2127 1781 5 2127 1856 5 2127 2127 5 2127 2127 5 2127 2127 5 2127 2178 5 2127 2396 5 2127 2561 5 2127 1303 6 2127 1323 6 2127 1487 6 2127 1856 6 2127 2059 6 2127 2092 6 2127 2127 6 2127 2127 6 2127 2127 6 2127 3184 6 2127