Patent ID: 7974963

Claim:
A system for retrieving confirming sentences from a sentence database in response to a query, the system comprising: a processor; computer storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions for configuring the processor to implement system components comprising: an input component which receives the query as an input; and a search engine coupled to the input component, the search engine comprising: a retrieval component retrieving a plurality of confirming sentences from the sentence database in response to the query; and a ranking component determining a similarity score for each respective confirming sentences of the plurality of retrieved confirming sentences relative to the query, wherein the similarity score for each respective confirming sentence is based on a plurality of factors, including a length factor calculated by determining a sentence length value corresponding to a length of the respective confirming sentence and applying the sentence length value to an exponential function, and wherein at least one of the plurality of factors comprises linguistic weights of a plurality of terms in the query, the linguistic weight of each term in the query comprising a weight assigned to the term in the query as a function of its part of speech; and wherein the ranking component determines the similarity score of the respective confirming sentence as a function of vector weights of each of a plurality of terms in the respective confirming sentence, vector weights of each of the plurality of terms in the query, and the linguistic weight of the plurality of terms in the query; and wherein the ranking component ranks the plurality of retrieved confirming sentences based upon the determined similarity scores.