Models of learning word meanings have generally assumed prior knowledge of the concepts to which the words refer. However, novel natural language text or discourse often presents both unknown concepts and words which refer to these concepts. Also, developmental data suggests that the learning of words and their concepts frequently occurs concurrently instead of concept learning proceeding word learning. This paper presents an integrated computational model for acquiring both word meanings and their underlying concepts concurrently. This model is implemented as a word learning component added to the GENESIS explanation-based learning schema acquisition system for narrative understanding. A detailed example is described in which GENESIS learns provisional definitions for the words "kidnap", "kidnapper", and "ransom" as well as a kidnapping schema from a single narrative.

PDF

In Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 947-978, Seattle, WA, July 1987.

@InProceedings{mooney:cogsci87, title={Integrated Learning of Words and their Underlying Concepts}, author={Raymond J. Mooney}, booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society}, month={July}, address={Seattle, WA}, key={GENESIS}, pages={947-978}, url="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ai-lab?mooney:cogsci87", year={1987} }