An information retrieval model with ordinal linguistic weighted queries based on two weighting elements

An Information Retrieval (IR) model defined using an ordinal fuzzy linguistic approach is proposed. It accepts ordinal linguistic weighted queries based on two weighting elements: the query terms and the query sub-expressions. In such a way, users may easily express simultaneously several semantic restrictions in a query. A symmetrical threshold semantic is associated to the weights of the query terms and an importance semantic is associated to the weights of the query sub-expressions. The advantage of this IR model with respect to others is the facility for expressing different semantic restrictions on the desired documents simultaneously, incorporating more flexibility in the user-IR system interaction.