Natural language system for terminological information retrieval

Abstract

The purpose of any information retrieval (IR) system in response to a query is to provide the user with the data that satisfy his information need. In order to design a user friendly onomasiological system (one to find a word from a description of a concept), we firstly must consider the searching process, i.e. query and matching. This paper is organised in two broad parts. The first part situates the general methodology for IR in relation to the particular problem of onomasiological searching. The second part discusses an experiment in onomasiological searching carried out on dictionaries to validate design principles for an onomasiological search system.