A Computational Theory of Vocabulary Expansion (1997)
| Venue: | In Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society |
| Citations: | 15 - 7 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Ehrlich97acomputational,
author = {Karen Ehrlich and William J. Rapaport},
title = {A Computational Theory of Vocabulary Expansion},
booktitle = {In Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society},
year = {1997},
pages = {205--210}
}
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Abstract
As part of an interdisciplinary project to develop a computational cognitive model of a reader of narrative text, we are developing a computational theory of how natural-languageunderstanding systems can automatically expand their vocabulary by determining from context the meaning of words that are unknown, misunderstood, or used in a new sense. `Context ' includes surrounding text, grammatical information, and background knowledge, but no external sources. Our thesis is that the meaning of such a word can be determined from context, can be revised upon further encounters with the word, "converges" to a dictionary-like definition if enough context has been provided and there have been enough exposures to the word, and eventually "settles down" to a "steady state" that is always subject to revision upon further encounters with the word. The system is being implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. This document is a slightly modified version (containing the...
