DR-LINK System: Phase I Summary

The underlying principle of the DR-LINK System is that retrieval must be at the conceptual level, not the word level. That is, a successful retrieval system must retrieve on the basis of what people mean in their query, not just what they say in their query. The same is true of documents their representation needs to capture the content at the conceptual level of expression. To accomplish this human-like goal, DRLINK aims to represent and match documents and queries at all of the available levels of linguistic expression at which meaning is conveyed. Accordingly, we have developed a modular system which processes, represents, and matches text at the lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels of language. In concert, these levels of representation permit DR-LINK to achieve a level of intelligent retrieval beyond more traditional approaches.