Domain Unconstrained Language Understanding Based on How-net

In this paper, we propose a method for domain unconstrained language understanding based on the How-net knowledge base. The goal is to construct a system that reads in an article and answers some related questions. For each sentence in the article, word segmentation is first applied. Then, the major components such as agent, theme, event, time, and place are extracted to construct a semantic-slot table and a semantic network. Answers of the questions are derived using two approaches, which are based on the relational and hierarchical relation among the major components. Our method is applied to the understanding of the primary-school textbook, and it is able to answer questions in the exercise of the textbook. 1