9. The question answering system of claim 6 , said processor analyzing terms in said question further comprising: identifying a type of relation based on said question; and filtering said relation instances according to said type of relation.
6. A question answering (QA) system comprising: a processor comprising a named-entity extractor; a first interface operatively connected to said processor; a second interface operatively connected to said processor; and a non-transitory storage device operatively connected to said processor, said non-transitory storage device storing a corpus of data comprising natural language documents, said first interface receiving a question to be answered by said QA system, said processor identifying a title and a topical field of a portion of a document in said corpus of data, using said named-entity extractor, said processor constructing title-oriented documents from said corpus of data, each said title-oriented document comprising said title and a topical field, said topical field comprising a field name and field content associated with said topical field of a document in said corpus of data, said processor constructing a structured knowledge base from said title-oriented documents, said structured knowledge base comprising a relation instance comprising a field identifier for said topical field, a title concept identifier, and a corresponding field content concept identifier, said processor calculating a count for each said relation instance based on a number of occurrences of said title concept identifier and said field content concept identifier within a corresponding document in said corpus of data comprising natural language documents, said processor analyzing terms in said question to identify a question content identifier based on previously established question term categories, said processor creating a collection of candidate answers to said question, said collection of candidate answers being created from said structured knowledge base, said processor generating a score for said candidate answers by adding each said count within each said relation instance corresponding to said candidate answers, and said processor outputting each said candidate answer through said second interface.