14. A computer system for determining a confidence score for candidate answers to questions in a question-answering system, comprising: an automated question answering (QA) system comprising: a query analysis module; a candidate answer generator operatively connected to said query analysis module; and a processor comprising: a plurality of first components; a plurality of second components operatively connected to said plurality of first components; and a classifier operatively connected to said plurality of second components; and a user interface operatively connected to said query analysis module, said user interface receiving a question into said automated QA system, said query analysis module determining a question lexical answer type (LAT) for said question; said candidate answer generator automatically computing a candidate answer to said question; said processor automatically computing a preliminary type for said candidate answer from each of said plurality of first components, said first components using different methods to produce said preliminary type; said processor automatically scoring a match between said preliminary type and said question LAT to produce a first type-score from each of said plurality of first components based on an amount that said preliminary type corresponds to said question LAT, said scoring being differentiated based on which component of said plurality of first components produced said preliminary type, and a same preliminary type receiving a different type-score based on differences between said components that produced said same preliminary type; said processor automatically evaluating each said preliminary type and said first type-score from each of said plurality of first components using each of said plurality of second components and producing a second score for said preliminary type based on a measure of degree that said preliminary type matches said question LAT for each of said plurality of second components; and said processor automatically outputting a final score for said preliminary type from said classifier based on said second score for said preliminary type from each of said plurality of second components.
18. The system according to claim 14 , further comprising: said processor using said classifier to automatically resolve said second score from each of said plurality of second components to a single final score using an aggregation function.