Distributional Hypothesis articulated
Zellig Harris published 'Distributional Structure' in *Word*, formally stating the principle that 'meaning is usage' and that words with similar contexts tend to have similar meanings.
Significance
Laid the fundamental theoretical groundwork for all future word embedding techniques, suggesting that word meaning could be inferred from its neighbors.
Key facts
- Year
- 1954
- Type
- invention
- Location
- University of Pennsylvania