TEXTUAL ENTAILMENT METHOD FOR LINKING TEXT OF AN ABSTRACT TO TEXT IN THE MAIN BODY OF A DOCUMENT

A system and method are provided for processing an input document which enable assessment of the coherence of an abstract of the document. The method includes storing the document in memory and, for each sentence of the abstract, comparing the sentence with sentences of a main body of the document using textual entailment techniques to identify whether the sentence of the abstract entails a sentence in the main body of the document. Links can then be generated between the entailing sentences of the abstract and the corresponding entailed sentences of the document. The document and generated links are output. The links enable the coherence of the abstract to be evaluated, either manually or automatically, using an evaluation component of the system.