1. A computer-implemented method for automatically generating answers to questions comprising the steps of: analyzing a corpus of documents to identify a document containing a list, wherein said list contains item-delimiting markup; parsing said list to identify type information and entities in said list indicated by said markup, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list comprises: extracting a type from a title indicating said list; determining a presence of item-delimeter mark-up associated with said list, each mark-up delimeter including or not including one or more associated hyperlinks, and for each determined item-delimiter mark-up item: if a hyperlink is included: obtaining an instance of a hyperlink in closest proximity to the mark-up item-delimeter, and extracting an entity from a target of said hyperlink instance; and if a hyperlink is not included: using an annotator to identify phrases included in text associated with the item-delimeter mark-up, and extracting a most salient phrase as said entity; creating entity-type pairs, wherein said entity-type pairs comprise said extracted entities and the identified type from said list; receiving a lexical answer type associated with an input query; receiving a candidate answer to said query; determining whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said created entity-type pairs; for any associated entity-type pairs, comparing said extracted type in said associated entity-type pair with said lexical answer type; generating a type-matching score, wherein said type-matching score is indicative of a quality of said obtained candidate answer based on matching types; and using said type-matching score to evaluate said candidate answer as an answer to said query; wherein a hardware processor automatically performs one or more of said steps.
1. A computer-implemented method for automatically generating answers to questions comprising the steps of: analyzing a corpus of documents to identify a document containing a list, wherein said list contains item-delimiting markup; parsing said list to identify type information and entities in said list indicated by said markup, wherein to identify said type information and entities in said list comprises: extracting a type from a title indicating said list; determining a presence of item-delimeter mark-up associated with said list, each mark-up delimeter including or not including one or more associated hyperlinks, and for each determined item-delimiter mark-up item: if a hyperlink is included: obtaining an instance of a hyperlink in closest proximity to the mark-up item-delimeter, and extracting an entity from a target of said hyperlink instance; and if a hyperlink is not included: using an annotator to identify phrases included in text associated with the item-delimeter mark-up, and extracting a most salient phrase as said entity; creating entity-type pairs, wherein said entity-type pairs comprise said extracted entities and the identified type from said list; receiving a lexical answer type associated with an input query; receiving a candidate answer to said query; determining whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said created entity-type pairs; for any associated entity-type pairs, comparing said extracted type in said associated entity-type pair with said lexical answer type; generating a type-matching score, wherein said type-matching score is indicative of a quality of said obtained candidate answer based on matching types; and using said type-matching score to evaluate said candidate answer as an answer to said query; wherein a hardware processor automatically performs one or more of said steps. 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising: storing, in a further memory storage device, said created entity-type pairs, each entity-pair structure representing said one or more entities and associated type, wherein said determining whether said candidate answer is associated with an entity in said entity-type pairs comprises: accessing said stored entity-type pairs to identify a type from an entity-type pair.