12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the query processor is further configured to: find at least one potential document, wherein document text for each potential document includes at least one of the document words from the current document, analyze each potential document to identify each similar document as a function of a comparison metric for the respective potential document and a comparison metric for the current document, and output a signal representing each similar document to a user via a communication network; and the similar document identifier further comprises: a feature extractor, configured to determine the comparison metric for the current document and the potential document, wherein the comparison metric is based on a combination of the prominence scores and the descriptiveness scores for each document word and pair of consecutive document words; and a prominence calculator, configured to calculate the prominence scores based on the results from the compound likelihood database.
12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the query processor is further configured to: find at least one potential document, wherein document text for each potential document includes at least one of the document words from the current document, analyze each potential document to identify each similar document as a function of a comparison metric for the respective potential document and a comparison metric for the current document, and output a signal representing each similar document to a user via a communication network; and the similar document identifier further comprises: a feature extractor, configured to determine the comparison metric for the current document and the potential document, wherein the comparison metric is based on a combination of the prominence scores and the descriptiveness scores for each document word and pair of consecutive document words; and a prominence calculator, configured to calculate the prominence scores based on the results from the compound likelihood database. 13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the query processor identifying each similar document comprises: calculating, for each potential document, a dot product of a scoring vector for the respective potential document and a scoring vector for the current document, wherein the scoring vectors are based on each document's respective comparison metric; and using the calculated scoring vectors to identify a similar document.