Using WordNet relations and semantic classes in information retrieval tasks

In this paper we explore the use of semantic classes in an existing information retrieval system in order to improve its results. Thus, we use two different ontologies of semantic classes (WordNet domain and Basic Level Concepts) in order to re-rank the retrieved documents and obtain better recall and precision. Finally, we implement a new method for weighting the expanded terms taking into account the weights of the original query terms and their relations in WordNet with respect to the new ones (which have demonstrated to improve the results). The evaluation of these approaches was carried out in the CLEF Robust-WSD Task, obtaining an improvement of 1.8% in GMAP for the semantic classes approach and 10% in MAP employing the WordNet term weighting approach.

This paper has been partially supported by the Spanish government, project TIN-2006-15265-C06-01 and by the framework of the project QALL-ME, which is a 6th Framework Research Programme of the European Union (EU), contract number: FP6-IST-033860 and by the University of Comahue under the project 04/E062.