Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition: A Computational Theory and Educational Curriculum

We discuss a research project that develops and applies algorithms for computational contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA): learning the meaning of unknown words from context. We try to unify a disparate literature on the topic of CVA from psychology, first- and secondlanguage acquisition, and reading science, in order to help develop these algorithms: We use the knowledge gained from the computational CVA system to build an educational curriculum for enhancing students’ abilities to use CVA strategies in their reading of science texts at the middle-school and college undergraduate levels. The knowledge gained from case studies of students using our CVA techniques feeds back into further development of our computational theory. Keywords: artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, reading, reasoning, science education, vocabulary acquisition.

[1]  Karen Ehrlich.  Automatic vocabulary expansion through narrative context , 1995 .

[2]  Stuart C. Shapiro,et al.  The CASSIE Projects: An Approach to Natural Language Competence , 1989, EPIA.

[3]  Nils J. Nilsson,et al.  Artificial Intelligence , 1974, IFIP Congress.

[4]  Michael W. Kibby,et al.  The Organization and Teaching of Things and the Words That Signify Them. , 1995 .

[5]  Stuart C. Shapiro.  SNePS: a logic for natural language understanding and commonsense reasoning , 2000 .

[6]  I.S.P. Nation,et al.  Guessing the meanings of words from context: Strategy and techniques , 1980 .

[7]  Udo Hahn,et al.  A Text Understander that Learns , 1998, ACL.

[8]  Maria R. Cravo,et al.  How to change your mind , 1991 .

[9]  G. Miller,et al.  How children learn words. , 1987, Scientific American.

[10]  Stuart C. Shapiro,et al.  Models and Minds: Knowledge Representation for Natural-Language Compe-tence , 1991 .

[11]  Stuart C. Shapiro,et al.  Title Index , 1986, CL.

[12]  Michael G. Dyer,et al.  The Self-Extending Phrasal Lexicon , 1987, Comput. Linguistics.

[13]  Richard Granger,et al.  FOUL-UP: A Program that Figures Out Meanings of Words from Context , 1977, IJCAI.

[14]  G. Miller,et al.  How children learn words. , 1987, Scientific American.

[15]  Marianne Elshout-Mohr,et al.  The acquisition of word meanings as a cognitive learning process , 1981 .

[16]  W. Rapaport,et al.  The SNePS family , 1992 .

[17]  P. Johnson-Laird.  The mental representation of the meaning of words , 1987, Cognition.

[18]  João P. Martins,et al.  SNePSwD: A newcomer to the SNePS family , 1993, J. Exp. Theor. Artif. Intell..

[19]  Stuart C. Shapiro,et al.  SNePS Considered as a Fully Intensional Propositional Semantic Network , 1986, AAAI.

[20]  Petra Barg,et al.  Processing Unknown Words in HPSG , 1998, ACL.

[21]  William E. Nagy,et al.  Learning Word Meanings From Context During Normal Reading , 1987 .

[22]  W. G. Perry.  Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. , 1970 .

[23]  Stuart C. Shapiro,et al.  A Model for Belief Revision , 1988, Artif. Intell..

[24]  Peter Fisher,et al.  Teaching Vocabulary in All Classrooms , 1995 .

[25]  William J. Rapaport,et al.  A computational theory of vocabulary acquisition , 2000 .

[26]  Steven L. Lytinen,et al.  The Ups and Downs of Lexical Acquisition , 1994, AAAI.

[27]  William J. Rapaport,et al.  Logic: A Computer Approach , 1985 .