{"pk":32253,"title":"A Computational Theory of Vocabulary Expansion","subtitle":null,"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-language-understanding 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, \"<i>converges</i>\" to a dictionary-like definition if enough context has been provided and there have been enough exposures to the word, and eventually \"<i>settles down</i>\" to a \"<i>steady state</i>\" 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.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Long Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6t0254gr","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Karen","middle_name":"","last_name":"Ehrlich","name_suffix":"","institution":"Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus","department":""},{"first_name":"William","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Rapaport","name_suffix":"","institution":"Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1997-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/32253/galley/23318/download/"}]}