APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL

Document retrieval system and method are disclosed which can diminish a gap between the user's retrieval intention in information retrieval and the configuration of a query as well as document representations in database and which permits easy retrieval reflecting the user's retrieval intention. The user enumerates a group of words which the user hits upon, as a primary query. Upon receipt of the primary query, the system estimates relational representations which the words (group) of the primary query can possess, and then makes expansion of the query through a partial coincidence of the relational representations and sample spaces extracted from document data to prepare a query candidate representation group. The expanded query candidate representation group is presented to the user. The user then simply chooses a relational representation candidate in accordance with his or her intention. A retrieval execution query is constituted by the thus-selected representation.