Learning Words: Computers and Kids 1

We present a computer-based model of acquisition of word meaning from context. The model uses semantic role assignments to search through a hierarchy of conceptual information for an appropriate meaning for an unknown word. The implementation of this approach has led to many surprising similarities with work in modelling human language acquisition. We describe the learning task and the model, then present an empirical test and discuss the relationships between this approach and the work in psycholinguistics.

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