On Expanding Query Vectors with Lexically Related Words
Ellen M. Voorhees · 1994
Experiments performed on small collections suggest that expanding query vectors with words that are lexically related to the original query words can improve retrieval effectiveness. Prior experiments using WordNet to automatically expand vectors in the large TREC-1 collection were inconclusive regarding effectiveness gains from lexically related words since any such effects were dominated by the choice of words to expand. This paper specifically investigates the effect of expansion by selecting query concepts to be expanded by hand. Concepts are represented by WordNet synonym sets and are expanded by following the typed links included in WordNet. Experimental results suggest that this query expansion technique makes little difference in retrieval effectiveness within the TREC environment, presumably because the TREC topic statements provide such a rich description of the information being sought. 1 Introduction The IR group at Siemens Corporate Research is investigating how concept ...