[comp.cog-eng] reference wanted

goss@ese.essex.ac.uk (Gossain Sanjiv) (02/23/90)

I'm not sure what newsgroup to post this message to but
this one seems most relevant...

I am looking for references on the subject of how 
people associate items with names. Or better still
how humans conceptualize items' attributes from their
names, or vice versa. Confused?

well, so am I . I need to find papers on conceptualization
of problem domains, _not_ domain analysis, but on
how we deduce attributes of objects from  their namesetc.

Hope you understood this let alone have what I want?

Sanjiv Gossain
Essex University
Colchester UK
goss%essex.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk

good@baviki.enet.dec.com (02/24/90)

There's been lots of work done on this topic.  The research that I
find most interesting, and that also seems relevant to your question,
is the statistical semantics work done at Bellcore.  One older reference is
the article on "Statistical Semantics: Analysis of the Potential Performance
of Key-word Information Systems" by George W. Furnas, Thomas K. 
Landauer, Louis M. Gomez, and Susan T. Dumais.  It's published in the 
Bell Systems Technical Journal, Vol. 66, No. 6, Part 3, pp. 1753-1806, 
1983.  I know they have more recent articles, but I don't have 
references to them offhand.  Do a search for articles by the 4 authors 
above and you should find some of that work.

Michael Good

Good@Baviki.Enet.Dec.Com