The ambiguity of negation in natural language queries to information retrieval systems

April R. McQuire and Caroline M. Eastman

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1998, vol. 49, issue 8, 686-692

Abstract: A prototype system to handle negation in natural language queries to information retrieval systems is presented. Whenever a query that has negation is entered, the system will determine whether or not it is necessary for the user to clarify exactly what constituents in the query are being negated. If clarification is needed, the user is presented with a list of choices and asked to select the appropriate one. The algorithm used is based on the results of a survey administered to 64 subjects. The subjects were given a number of queries using negation. For each query, several possible choices for the negated constituent(s) were given. Whenever a lexical unit composed of nouns connected by the conjunction and was negated, there was general agreement on the response. But whenever there were multiple lexical units involved, such as complex lexical units connected by and or prepositional phrases, the subjects were divided on the choices. The results of this survey indicate that it is not possible for a system to automatically disambiguate all uses of negation. However, it is possible for the user interface to handle disambiguation through a clarification dialog during which a user is asked to select from a list of possible interpretations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Date: 1998
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https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199806)49:83.0.CO;2-J

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