A system and method for information retrieval are presented. A client computer receives a natural language query comprising an array of tokens. A query processing server analyzes the natural language query (interpreted as a question) to identify a plurality of terms and a relationship between one or more pairs of the terms according to a knowledge model defining interrelationships between a plurality of entities. A set of assertions is constructed using the relationship between the pair of terms, and a query is executed against a knowledge base of frequently asked questions, corresponding answers, documents and/or data using the set of assertions to generate a set of results. The knowledge base identifies a plurality of items, each of the plurality of items is associated with at least one annotation identifying at least one of the entities in the knowledge model. The set of results are transmitted to the client computer.