THE INTERPRETATION OF WORD ASSOCIATIONS.

Abstract

It is argued that it is possible to measure at least two kinds of word associations: 'synonymy' associations, which relate words according to likeness of meaning, and 'contiguity' associations, which relate words according to probable relationships among their physical designata. Formulas which measure both types of association are developed for content analysis and automatic abstracting. This paper is concerned with possible linguistic interpretations of such word association measures. (Author)