Showing papers on "Semantic similarity published in 1985"

The semantic theory of evolution

Abstract: The seeds of life, according to Barbieri, were particles combining RNA and protein components, the ribosoids, that later evolved into at least two distinct classes of ribosomes: The 70 S prokaryotic ribosomes, and the much larger 80 S eukaryotic ribosomes. Assume you are a ribosome in a primitive soup. What would be the best strategy to perpetuate yourself? Invent DNA and the genetic code! To the usual alternative: Nucleic acids or proteins came first, Barbieri opposes a third way: “It was genotype and phenotype which had to adapt to the ribotype, not the other way round”. As the author convincingly shows (pp. 124-129), many differences in design between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells relate to just one strategic difference in the translation process; ribosomes do have almost direct access to genes in bacteria, and are separated from them by a nuclear membrane in eukaryotes. The book is particularly enjoyable for its historical narratives in three domains: The evolution of species (“Why people chose to remember Darwin only for his good ideas and Lamarck only for his bad ones is a mystery to me”), pre-Oparinian thinking on the origins of life, with references to Osborn, Perrier and Constantin (Giglio de Tos being omitted, this time), and cellular theory. Barbieri’s book will be an agreeable companion to those who like reading and thinking about evolutionary theories, and it is a must for those who intend writing their own historical account of the subject.

Developmental invariance in the effects of functional self-knowledge on memory.

Abstract: PULLYBLANK, JOHN; BISANZ, JEFFREY; ScoTrr, CINDY; and CHAMPION, MARY ANN. Developmental Invariance in the Effects of Functional Self-Knowledge on Memory. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 1447-1454. 2 studies were conducted to identify possible developmental changes in functional self-knowledge, i.e., how self-knowledge can be used to process information. Children, from 7 to 11 years of age, and adults were presented with adjectives preceded by either a semantic encoding question (a judgment of semantic similarity) or a self-reference encoding question (a judgment of whether the word described themselves). After an intervening task, an unexpected test of free recall was administered. Recall of words initially accompanied by self-reference questions is superior to recall of words accompanied by semantic questions at all age levels. Moreover, the advantage of selfreference does not vary with age. Thus, a functional aspect of self-knowledge, as indicated by the advantage of self-reference encoding, appears to be well developed by middle childhood and to show little developmental change. Results are interpreted in terms of a distinction between functional and expressive self-knowledge.

A cross-cultural investigation of the graphic differential

Abstract: A new Graphic Differential (GD) suggested by French (1977) may be used as a language-free alternative to the Semantic Differential (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). The new GD (which is based on prior attempts by other writers) consists of 5 pictographic scales for each semantic dimension: Evaluation, Potency, and Activity. Since the GD employs pictograms instead of adjectives, it would be a suseful tool for cross-cultural research, given that the pictograms, although developed in the United States, are understood universally. In the present study, 46 American and 46 German subjects sorted the 15 graphic scales according to semantic similarity. Responses were summarized in similarity matrices, which were analyzed further by the methods of maximum spanning tree and hierarchical cluster analysis. American results show that the intended meaning of the scales could be understood. This strengthens the intracultural validity of the GD. In general, the German findings were similar. The German subjects, however, could not categorize all the scales as clearly as the Americans. The “problematic” scales could weaken the cross-cultural validity of the GD.

Effects of semantic relatedness on same-different decisions in a good-bad categorization task.

Abstract: Schvaneveldt, Durso, and Mukherji (1982) investigated the effect of relatedness on six kinds of same-different categorization tasks. They discovered two distinct patterns of results. For tasks involving surface features of words, relatedness facilitated both same and different judgments equally, whereas for tasks requiring a semantic analysis, relatedness facilitated same judgments but had no effect on different judgments. The only task that did not conform to this division was judgment of good versus bad, which showed the same pattern as surface-featu re tasks. The present two experiments showed that this anomaly was due to the use of antonym word pairs for this task. When nonantonyms are used, there is no facilitation of different judgments by relatedness. The nature of antonymy as a semantic relation is discussed. In a recent article, Schvaneveldt, Durso, and Mukherji (1982) discovered two distinct classes of same-different categorization tasks. They were investigating the effects of semantic relatedness on same-different category judgments, using six different tasks that varied in the depth of processing required. The particular advance that they made over previous research on this question (Glass, Holyoak, & O'Dell, 1974; Schaeffer & Wallace, 1970) was in devising materials for which relatedness could be manipulated independently of whether a same or a different response had to be made. Thus, a lack of semantic relatedness between a pair of words could not be used as the basis for a different decision (as had been possible in earlier studies). They discovered that for judgments involving vowel-consonant (as initial letter of the word), word-nonword (where the nonword was a misspelled word), and good-bad decisions, a particular pattern of results could be obtained. For these three tasks, semantic relatedness facilitated both same and different responses equally. For judgments involving plant-animal, natural-manmade, or noun-verb, however, a different pattern was found. For these tasks, relatedness facilitated same decisions,

Partial constraints in Chinese analysis

Abstract: In this paper, we describe a method using semantic constraints to reduce the ambiguities and generate case structure from phrase structure in Chinese sentence analysis. Semantic constraints written on semantic markers indicate the plausible case structure. Different sets of semantic markers are chosen according to the purpose. A priority evaluation scheme steers the analysis towards the most plausible structure first, without trying all possibilities.

Poetic language and semantic information-processing

Abstract: In this paper I am proposing a cognitive theory and description of the semantic structure of figurative language and rhyme. My assumption is, that an adequate theory of metaphor must satisfy four requirements: 1. to give a structural description of metaphors; 2. to explain how human beings understand novel metaphors; 3. to explain the relationship between this process and the process by which human beings produce and understand novel pieces of literal discourse; 4. to explain the relationship between these processes and the perceived effects of metaphors. The semantic information processing model underlying this paper is a hierarchic model of \"meaning components\". The same model can explain word acquisition by infants, word association, the understanding of new metaphors, the perceived effects of rhymes and other cognitive phenomena. A theory of minimum features cannot do justice to the richness of real-life categories. So the model is further developed in three directions: Mervis' work on \"good examples\"; Collins and Quillian's work on the structure of semantic memory; Rumelhart's work on \"cognitive schemata\".