Stemming can produce one of three match types.
If stemming is enabled, a search on a given term (
T) will produce
one or more of these results:
- Literal matches: Any
occurrence of
T will always produce a match.
- Stem form matches: Matches
will occur on the stem form of
T (assuming that
T is not a stem form). For example, if
T is
children, then
child (the stem form) will also match.
- Inflected form matches:
Matches will occur on all inflected forms of the stem form of
T. For example, if
T is the verb
ran (as in
Jane ran in the Boston Marathon), then matches will include the
stem form (run) and inflected forms (such as
runs and
running). (Note that although this example is in English,
stemming for inflected verb forms is not supported for English; see below for
support details).
The order of the returned results depends on the sorting configuration:
- If relevance ranking is
enabled and the Interpreted (interp) module is used, literal matches will
always have higher priority than stem form and inflected form
matches.
- If relevance ranking is not
enabled but you have set a record sort order, the results will come back in
that sort order.
- If relevance ranking is not
enabled and there is no record sort order, the order of the results is
completely arbitrary.