LINGUISTIC AGGREGATION OPERATORS OF SELECTION CRITERIA IN FUZZY INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL

A ''softening'' of the hard Boolean scheme for information retrieval i s presented. In this approach, information retrieval is seen as a mult icriteria decision-making activity in which the criteria to be satisfi ed by the potential solutions, i.e., the archived documents, are the r equirements expressed in the query. The retrieval function is then an overall decision function evaluating the degree to which each potentia l solution satisfies a query consisting of information requirements ag gregated by operators. Linguistic quantifiers and a connector dealing with primary and optional criteria are defined and introduced in the q uery language in order to specify the aggregation criteria of the sing le query requirements. These criteria make it possible for users to ex press queries in a simple and self-explanatory manner. In particular, linguistic quantifiers are defined which capture the intrinsic vaguene ss of information needs. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.