formulationWho

FormulationWho is a term used in linguistics and natural language processing to describe a method or framework for constructing and interpreting questions and statements that center on the agent in a clause. The formulation emphasizes identifying or introducing the actor or responsible entity, typically by using the pronoun who or related wh- forms, and is discussed in the context of question formation and information extraction.

In practice, formulationWho encompasses rules for transforming sentences to highlight the agent, disambiguating who performed an action, and generating clarifying prompts when agent information is uncertain. It can be applied to active–passive transformations, role labeling, and dialogue systems in which the user’s intent involves identifying an actor.

Applications include question answering, chatbots, and corpus annotation. In QA, it helps systems recognize queries about agents and retrieve correct facts. In dialogue design, it guides turn-taking prompts that elicit missing agent information and supports clearer user-system interaction when agent identity is essential.

Example: Given a sentence "The committee approved the proposal," a formulationWho analysis would focus on introducing "Who approved the proposal?" or, when needed, requesting disambiguation with "Which person approved the proposal?" It can also align with information extraction tasks that tag agent roles and relationships within sentences.

Origin and status: The term is used informally in some NLP discussions and is not universally standardized across the field. It reflects broader concerns with agent-focused phrasing and processing in language technologies.

See also: natural language processing, question answering, information extraction, agent detection, wh-questions.