Natural language information retrieval system and method

Abstract

Techniques for generating sophisticated representations of the contents of both queries and documents in a retrieval system by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to represent, index, and retrieve texts at the multiple levels (e.g., the morphological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, discourse, and pragmatic levels) at which humans construe meaning in writing. The user enters a query and the system processes the query to generate an alternative representation, which includes conceptual-level abstraction and representations based on complex nominals (CNs), proper nouns (PNs), single terms, text structure, and logical make-up of the query, including mandatory terms. After processing the query, the system displays query information to the user, indicating the system's interpretation and representation of the content of the query. The user is then given an opportunity to provide input, in response to which the system modifies the alternative representation of the query. Once the user has provided desired input, the possibly modified representation of the query is matched to the relevant document database, and measures of relevance generated for the documents. A set of documents is presented to the user, who is given an opportunity to select some or all of the documents, typically on the basis of such documents being of particular relevance. The user then initiates the generation of a query representation based on the alternative representations of the selected document(s).