Knowledge-assisted document retrieval: I. The natural-language interface
Gautam Biswas, James C. Bezdek, Marisol Marques, Viswanath Subramanian · Journal of the American Society for Information Science · 1987
In this article we describe the conceptual model and processing of (constrained) natural-language queries in information retrieval systems. A language interface based on fuzzy set techniques is proposed to handle the uncertainty inherent in natural-language semantics. The conceptual model is developed and exemplified in the context of document retrieval. Specifically, the user query is considered to be a triple, q = (qc, qy, qn), where qc indicates the part of the query that deals with concepts and operators that link these concepts, qy identifies the publication period the user is interested in, and qn, pertains to the number of documents to be retrieved. We describe query decomposition using an augmented transition network parser and the assignment of functions and relations needed by each portion of the query to represent uncertainties inherent in the natural language. The output of the natural-language interface is then passed to a knowledge-based retrieval mechanism that will be described in a companion article (Part II). © 1987 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.