Distributional Hypothesis

The distributional hypothesis suggests that words that occur in similar contexts tend to have similar meanings [1]. Let us examine the following two sentences with blanks:

A: I sat on a __

B: I played with my __

The blank for A can be filled with words such as {bench, chair, sofa, stool}, which convey the meaning "something to sit on" in this context. On the other hand, the blank for B can be filled with words such as {child, dog, friend, toy}, carrying the meaning of "someone/thing to play with." However, these two sets of words are not interchangeable, as it is unlikely that you would sit on a "friend" or play with a "sofa".

This hypothesis provides a potent framework for understanding how meaning is encoded in language and has become a cornerstone of modern computational linguistics and natural language processing.

Assuming that your corpus has only the following three sentences, what context would influence the meaning of the word "chair" according to the distributional hypothesis?

• I sat on a chair.

• I will chair the meeting.

• I am the chair of my department.

References

1. Distributional Structure, Zellig S. Harris, Word, 10 (2-3): 146-162, 1954.