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.

Q1: 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?

1. I sat on a chair.

2. I will chair the meeting.

3. I am the chair of my department.

References

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