Topology of the conceptual network of language

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• Graham Spink
• Friday 30 May 2008, 16:00-16:30
• TCM Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact James Kermode.

Topology of the conceptual network of language by Motter, de Moura, Lai and Dasgupta Phys. Rev. E, Vol. 65, 065102

We define two words in a language to be connected if they express similar concepts. The network of connections among the many thousands of words that make up a language is important not only for the study of the structure and evolution of languages, but also for cognitive science. We study this issue quantitatively, by mapping out the conceptual network of the English language, with the connections being defined by the entries in a Thesaurus dictionary. We find that this network presents a small-world structure, with an amazingly small average shortest path, and appears to exhibit an asymptotic scale-free feature with algebraic connectivity distribution.

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