@inproceedings{gao-etal-2026-generating,
title = "Generating then Refining for Reliable Knowledge Base Question Answering",
author = "Gao, Jianqi and
Yu, Hang and
Cao, Jian and
Bu, Ranran and
Tang, Jinghua and
Zhu, Nengjun and
Zhang, Yonggang",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1479/",
pages = "32070--32087",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Knowledge Base Question Answering (KBQA) aims to retrieve accurate answers to natural language queries by retrieving and reasoning over large-scale structured knowledge bases (KBs). Advanced semantic parsing-based methods promoted by large language models (LLMs) demonstrate superior performance by transforming questions into structured queries, i.e., logical forms (LFs). However, LFs generated by LLMs could be non-executable due to the inherent semantic hallucination issue of LLMs and the complex graph retrieval characteristics of the KBQA task. To address this challenge, we propose a novel ``generate-verify-refine'' framework, termed Action-Reflection-Integrated KBQA (ARI-KBQA) for reliable LF generation. ARI-KBQA introduces a dual-module cooperative architecture: First, an action generator is trained to produce initial query paths based on a hop-by-hop reasoning strategy. Then a reflection verifier dynamically validates path feasibility by interacting with the KBs. Consequently, ARI-KBQA filters out invalid LFs and provides semantic correction feedback to the action generator for iteratively refining LFs. Evaluations on standard KBQA benchmarks show that the proposed ARI-KBQA significantly enhances model performance with a reduced search space, especially in complex multi-hop query scenarios."
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<abstract>Knowledge Base Question Answering (KBQA) aims to retrieve accurate answers to natural language queries by retrieving and reasoning over large-scale structured knowledge bases (KBs). Advanced semantic parsing-based methods promoted by large language models (LLMs) demonstrate superior performance by transforming questions into structured queries, i.e., logical forms (LFs). However, LFs generated by LLMs could be non-executable due to the inherent semantic hallucination issue of LLMs and the complex graph retrieval characteristics of the KBQA task. To address this challenge, we propose a novel “generate-verify-refine” framework, termed Action-Reflection-Integrated KBQA (ARI-KBQA) for reliable LF generation. ARI-KBQA introduces a dual-module cooperative architecture: First, an action generator is trained to produce initial query paths based on a hop-by-hop reasoning strategy. Then a reflection verifier dynamically validates path feasibility by interacting with the KBs. Consequently, ARI-KBQA filters out invalid LFs and provides semantic correction feedback to the action generator for iteratively refining LFs. Evaluations on standard KBQA benchmarks show that the proposed ARI-KBQA significantly enhances model performance with a reduced search space, especially in complex multi-hop query scenarios.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Generating then Refining for Reliable Knowledge Base Question Answering
%A Gao, Jianqi
%A Yu, Hang
%A Cao, Jian
%A Bu, Ranran
%A Tang, Jinghua
%A Zhu, Nengjun
%A Zhang, Yonggang
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F gao-etal-2026-generating
%X Knowledge Base Question Answering (KBQA) aims to retrieve accurate answers to natural language queries by retrieving and reasoning over large-scale structured knowledge bases (KBs). Advanced semantic parsing-based methods promoted by large language models (LLMs) demonstrate superior performance by transforming questions into structured queries, i.e., logical forms (LFs). However, LFs generated by LLMs could be non-executable due to the inherent semantic hallucination issue of LLMs and the complex graph retrieval characteristics of the KBQA task. To address this challenge, we propose a novel “generate-verify-refine” framework, termed Action-Reflection-Integrated KBQA (ARI-KBQA) for reliable LF generation. ARI-KBQA introduces a dual-module cooperative architecture: First, an action generator is trained to produce initial query paths based on a hop-by-hop reasoning strategy. Then a reflection verifier dynamically validates path feasibility by interacting with the KBs. Consequently, ARI-KBQA filters out invalid LFs and provides semantic correction feedback to the action generator for iteratively refining LFs. Evaluations on standard KBQA benchmarks show that the proposed ARI-KBQA significantly enhances model performance with a reduced search space, especially in complex multi-hop query scenarios.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1479/
%P 32070-32087
Markdown (Informal)
[Generating then Refining for Reliable Knowledge Base Question Answering](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1479/) (Gao et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Jianqi Gao, Hang Yu, Jian Cao, Ranran Bu, Jinghua Tang, Nengjun Zhu, and Yonggang Zhang. 2026. Generating then Refining for Reliable Knowledge Base Question Answering. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 32070–32087, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.