Finding Answers in Large Collections of Texts: Paragraph Indexing + Abductive Inference

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This paper describes a methodology of answering questions by using information retrieved from very large collections of texts. We argue that combinations of information retrieval and extractions techniques cannot be used, due to the open-domain nature of the task. We propose a solution based on indexing techniques that identify paragraphs from texts where the answers can be found. The validity of the answers is obtained through a lightweight process of abduction.