While this has no not, it might be a starting point and accepts only balanced parenthesis (see last __DATA__ string) 

result = '';
my $re = qr{
                \(
                 (?:
                    (?>[^()]+)
                    |
                    (??{ $re })
                  )*
                 \)
    |
             (?>[^()]+)
           }x;

while(<DATA>) {
    print parse($_) . "\n\n\n";
}

sub parse {
    my $line = shift;
    my $op = '';
    my $result;
    while($line =~ m/\G($re)/g){
        my $part = $1;
        if ($part =~ m/\((.*)\)/) { # previously greedy, non working!
            $result .= " ( ";
            $result .= parse($1); # did not recures on prior version
            $result .= ' ) ';
        } else {
            my ($op, $w1, $w2) = matchPart($part);
            $result .= " ". $op . $w1;
            $result .= " " . $op . $w2 if $w2;
        }
    }
    return $result;
}

sub matchPart {
    my $part = shift;
    if ($part =~ m/(-?[\w]*)\s+(and|or)\s+(-?\w+)/i) {
        my $op = $2 eq 'and' ? '+' : $2 eq 'not' ? '-': '';
        return ($op, $1, $3);
    }
    return ('', '','');
}
__DATA__
(word1 or word2) and (word3 or word4)
word1 or word2
word2 and word3
(word1 and word2) or word3
(word1 or word2) and (word3 or word4
((word1 or word2) and (word3 or word4))
__END__
 (  word1 word2 )   (  word3 word4 )

 word1 word2

 +word2 +word3

 (  +word1 +word2 )   word3

 (  word1 word2 )

 (  (  word1 word2 )   (  word3 word4 )  )

[download]

Update: Fixed the code as indicated via comments, to actually match nested parenthesis.

Edit: Fixed strong tags, thanks to abell

regards,
tomte

Hlade's Law:

If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person --
they will find an easier way to do it.

In reply to Re: converting a boolean syntax by Tomte
in thread converting a boolean syntax by glwtta

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