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Discussion Class 9

Thesaurus Construction

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Discussion Classes

Format:

Question

Ask a member of the class to answer

Provide opportunity for others to comment

When answering:

Give your name. Make sure that the TA hears it.

Stand up

Speak clearly so that all the class can hear

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Question 1: Terminology

computer-aided instructionsee also educationUF teaching machinesBT educational computingTT computer applicationsRT educationRT teaching

The following example is from the INPSEC thesaurus

(a) Explain this record

(b) What do the abbreviations mean?

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Question 2: Coordination

(a) Explain the terms:

precoordinationpostcoordination

(b) What are the advantages and disadvantages of precoordination in manual thesaurus building?

(c) What are the advantages and disadvantages of postcoordination in automatic thesaurus building?

(d) How woulod hteses answers differ with auttomatic thesaurus creation?

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Question 3: Term relationship

(a) Define the following term relationships:

equivalencehierarchicalnon-hierarchicalquasi-synonym

(b) Define the following term relations:part-wholecollocationparadigmatictaxonomy and synonymyantonymy

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Question 4: Manual thesaurus construction

(a) Describe the process of manual thesaurus construction.

(b) How would you expect a manually constructed thesaurus to differ from one built automatically?

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Question 5: Construction of vocabulary

(a) What steps are taken to normalize vocabulary? Distinguish between manual and automatic thesaurus construction

(b) In automatic thesaurus construction, what are the choices for selecting vocabulary?

(c) Explain the method of selecting vocabulary by discrimination value.

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Question 6: Vocabulary organization

(a) What is cluster analysis?

(b) Explain how cluster analysis is used in automatic thesaurus generation.

(c) What factors would you expect to be important in using cluster analysis for automatic thesaurus generation?

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Question 7: Programs

What is the function of the following programs?

(a) select.c

(b) hierarchy.c

(c) merge.c

Explain the basic algorithm used by each program.