Bridging Languages for Question Answering

In this paper we focus on resources and techniques available for Multilingual and Cross-language Question Answering (QA). First, we show that in the last years a number of tools and resources, such as lexical databases and the Web, have become standard constituents in QA systems development. Then, we present an overview of the possible uses of such resources in the general QA framework, focusing on the portability issue. In this direction, we elaborate on the potentialities offered by the MultiWordNet lexical database and the World Wide Web in the construction of a cross-language QA system for English and Italian.