Natural language question-answering systems: 1969

Kuhn (1962) has persuasively argued that science progresses by means of its paradigms--its models of the general nature of a research area--and that at the frontiers of research the primary quest is for a good paradigm. The small frontier outpost of language data processing has been characterized by an intensive seeking for a paradigm suitable to guide its researchers as they survey the complex topography of natural language structures. The earliest paradigm--one that led mechanical translators and early information retrievalists into a hopeless cul-de-sac--was that words (i.e.