Natural Language Semantic Answering: Application to Medicinal Plants and Coronavirus

A question answering system that receives as input a question in Spanish and returns the answer is presented. Preguntas y Respuestas {questions and answers} (PryRe) has two main components: 1) An information retrieval component that identifies the meaning of the question using its semantic properties. This component transforms the question into a triplet: R (C, V), where R is the relation or link, C is the concept or main idea, and V is the value of the concept. Example: ¿Cuál es la hierba que mejora la digestión? {What is the herb that improves digestion?} becomes R(C, V) = mejora (hierba, digestión) {improves(herb, digestion)}. This component uses natural language processing modules; 2) a component that uses the triplet to carry out a query analysis on PryRe's ontology, to identify the answer, which in the example is Manzanilla {Chamomile}. This component performs the semantic identification of the question while traveling on parts of the ontology. Details of the PryRe system are given, as well as tests on herbalism and Coronavirus. It shows an acceptable accuracy (82%). Resources used in this work are (A) a notation used to describe ontologies, and (B) the deductive capability of PryRe.