Natural Language Semantic Answering: Application to Medicinal Plants and Coronavirus

Abstract

This paper describes PryRe (Preguntas y Respuestas) {Questions and answers}, a question answering system that receives as input a question in Spanish and returns the answer. An information retrieval algorithm identifies the meaning of the question using its semantic properties. To do this, it is necessary to implement natural language processing modules. PryRe identifies the question using 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. For example, in the question: ¿Cuál es la hierba que mejora la digestion? {What is the herb that improves digestion?}, the answer is Manzanilla {Chamomile}. To obtain this response, a process of query analysis and design is executed. The analysis consists of identifying the answer, we call this process the semantic identification of the question. The PryRe  algorithms are explained in detail. The tests have been carried out with some sources on herbalism [15] and on 2019-nCoV [14] in an Ontology; they show an acceptable accuracy of 83%. Resources used in this work are (1) the OM notation, which is used to describe ontologies, and (2) the deductive capability of PryRe. PryRe consults this ontology to answer the questions using cases that are described in its algorithm.