00100	            A QUESTION ANSWERING SYSTEM FOR THE ARPA NET
00200	
00300	
00400		The ARPA Net  will  have  many  computers  on  it  with  many
00500	interesting  files  in  many  formats.  We propose to make a question
00600	answering system to extract information from  these  files  with  the
00700	following properties:
00800	
00900		1. The files do not have to be in any special format, because
01000	the QA system has files that describe the data files in  such  a  way
01100	that  the  QA  program  can tell what computer on the net to call and
01200	what commands to give to extract the desired information.
01300	
01400		2. The basic information system is not to be oriented towards
01500	natural  language.   One  of the major problems is to devise suitable
01600	structures  for  the  file   description   language   and   for   the
01700	interrogation language.  Those whose hobby is natural language are at
01800	liberty to construct an English front end for the system.
01900