Peter, thank to you and Yvon who have found this wonderful quotation (http://www.mt-archive.info/50/Weaver-1949.pdf). The question is: where does the “folk wisdom” of N=3 come from?
Thanks again, Andras > On Jan 6, 2021, at 11:18 PM, Peter Kolb <[email protected]> wrote: > > The question of context window size is raised (but not answered) by Warren > Weaver in his Memorandum from 1949, under the heading "Meaning and Context": > > If one examines the words in a book, one at a time as through an opaque mask > with a hole in it one word wide, then it is obviously impossible to > determine ... the meaning of the words. "Fast" may mean "rapid"; or it may > mean "motionless"; and there is no way of telling which. > But, if one lengthens the slit in the opaque mask, until one can see not only > the central word in question but also say N words on either side, then if N > is large enough one can unambiguously decide the meaning of the central word. > ... > The practical question is: "What minimum value of N will, at least in a > tolerable fraction of cases, lead to the correct choice of meaning for the > central word?" > > (in Locke & Booth, Machine Translation of Languages, 1955, p. 20) > > Regards, > Peter Kolb > > Am Mi., 6. Jan. 2021 um 08:25 Uhr schrieb Andras Kornai <[email protected]>: > When I started to learn about these things, it was Received Wisdom that to > disambiguate a word, or to provide a translation equivalent, a context of 3 > words on each side of the target are almost always sufficient. > (Counterexamples could always be constructed, but for the statistical > majority of the cases three on each side would be fine.) But where does this > piece of wisdom originate? Weaver? Salton? Sparck-Jones? Bar-Hillel? Any > pointers to the literature, including pointers to counterarguments, would be > greatly appreciated. > > Thank you, > Andras Kornai > _______________________________________________ > Mt-list site list > [email protected] > http://lists.eamt.org/mailman/listinfo/mt-list _______________________________________________ Mt-list site list [email protected] http://lists.eamt.org/mailman/listinfo/mt-list
