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Compound Words

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In some languages, such as German, nouns are compounded from simpler nouns. These compound nouns are too specific in meaning for reasonable query recall. For example, without decomposition, a query for "Versicherung" ("insurance") does not match "Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft" ("life-insurance salesman"). In cases such as this, it is recommended that word breakers break these compound words into base components during both index creation and query time. The German word breaker breaks "Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft" into the component words "Leben," "Versicherung," and "Gesellschaft." It applies the same decomposition at query time, along with optional stemming for each of the resultant terms.