You should read the IBM Journal "This is Watson", this is the most advanced QA system. Articles are e.g. linked from here: http://www.ke.tu-darmstadt.de/lehre/ss13/ml-sem
In Watson, structured resources/ontologies have been used extensively, and moderately contributed to overall answer accuracy. Specifically, see http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-heq/W(12)%20STRUCTURED%20DATA%2006177725.pdf .