---
title: "A Conceptual Theory of Question Answering"
authors:
  - "Wendy G. Lehnert"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/33"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/0033.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1977
pages: "158-163"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# A Conceptual Theory of Question Answering

Wendy G. Lehnert

*Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 158-163.

## Abstract

A theory of Q/A has been proposed from the perspective of natural language processing that relies on ideas in conceptual information processing and theories of human memory organization. This theory of Q/A has been implemented in a computer program, QUALM. QUALM is currently used by two story understanding systems (SAM and PAM) to complete a natural language processing system that reads stories and answers questions about what was read. Keywords: natural language processing, computational question answering, conceptual information