To provide an answer candidate generation device that obtains appropriate and various answer candidates corresponding to a question sentence, an answer candidate generation method, and a program.SOLUTION: An answer candidate generation device 100 includes: a sentence pattern generation unit 30 that generates sentence patterns; an expanded word candidate generation unit 32 that obtains each word similar to each answer word corresponding to a question and each word contained in the question sentence on the basis of a score of a concept vector as an expanded answer word candidate; an expanded answer candidate re-ranking unit 34 that obtains expanded answer word candidates corresponding to top N integration scores, the integration score being based on a score of a language model and a score of the concept vector; and a clustering unit 36 that performs clustering based on the concept vector on a word set containing the top N expanded answer word candidates and the answer word for the question sentence. The answer candidate generation device repeats processing of expanded word candidate generation, expanded word candidate re-ranking, and the clustering until a predetermined condition is satisfied.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1
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