1. A method comprising: determining, by a processing system of a question answering computer system, a first set of relations between one or more pairs of terms in a question; determining, by the processing system, a second set of relations between one or more pairs of terms in a candidate passage comprising a candidate answer to the question; matching, by the processing system, the first set of relations to the second set of relations; determining, by the processing system, a plurality of scores based on the matching; and aggregating, by the processing system, the scores to produce an answer score indicative of a level of support that the candidate answer correctly answers the question.