The QALL-ME Framework: A specifiable-domain multilingual Question Answering architecture ⁎

Abstract This paper presents the QALL-ME Framework, a reusable architecture for building multi- and cross-lingual Question Answering (QA) systems working on structured data modelled by an ontology. It is released as free open source software with a set of demo components and extensive documentation, which makes it easy to use and adapt. The main characteristics of the QALL-ME Framework are: (i) its domain portability, achieved by an ontology modelling the target domain; (ii) the context awareness regarding space and time of the question; (iii) the use of textual entailment engines as the core of the question interpretation; and (iv) an architecture based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is realized using interchangeable web services for the framework components. Furthermore, we present a running example to clarify how the framework processes questions as well as a case study that shows a QA application built as an instantiation of the QALL-ME Framework for cinema/movie events in the tourism domain.