A method, computer readable medium and system are provided which retrieve
confirming sentences from a sentence database in response to a query. A
search engine retrieves confirming sentences from the sentence database
in response to the query. IN retrieving the confirming sentences, the
search engine defines indexing units based upon the query, with the
indexing units including both lemma from the query and extended indexing
units associated with the query. The search engine then retrieves a
plurality of sentences from the sentence database using the defined
indexing units as search parameters. A similarity between each of the
plurality of retrieved sentences and the query is determined by the
search engine, wherein each similarity is determined as a function of a
linguistic weight of a term in the query. The search engine then ranks
the plurality of retrieved sentences based upon the determined
similarities.