DISTRIBUTIONAL MEANING

Abstract

This article explores the concept of distributional meaning in linguistics, which is based on the idea that the meaning of a word can be inferred from the linguistic contexts in which it appears. Originating from the work of Zellig Harris and popularized by J.R. Firth's phrase, "You shall know a word by the company it keeps," the distributional approach has become central in computational linguistics and natural language processing. The paper discusses the theoretical foundations of distributional semantics, modern applications in vector space models such as Word2Vec and GloVe, as well as the strengths and limitations of this approach. It also considers recent advancements in contextual word embeddings and their role in enhancing the understanding of word meaning. Distributional meaning remains a powerful and scalable method for analyzing language through large corpora, shaping the future of linguistic analysis and Al.