Extracting primary information requests from query messages by partial discourse processing

This paper develops an efficient mechanism for extracting primary information requests from 'Seek-Object' type query messages. The mechanism consists of three steps. The first step extracts sentences which signal that the query is 'SeekObject' type by recognizing distinctive surface expressions. The second step, biased by the expression patterns, analyzes their internal structures. The third step integrates these fragments by a partial discourse processing and represents writers' goal-directed information request; as these sentences often include referential expressions and the referred expressions are in background goal descriptions. We claim the mechanism can extract information requests fairly accurately, by showing evaluation results.