Category systems extracted from textual material are an important part of the scientific process and qualitative analysis but are frequently developed on an ad-hoc basis. Their development can be improved by a stronger reliance on linguistic and semantic principles. Tracing and recapitulating the development of semantic principles from the 1950s to the 1990s in linguistics and text analysis show how the principled use of information from lexical resources can facilitate the development and analysis of category systems. These principles are demonstrated in examining the category systems of Minnesota Contextual Content Analysis, a technique for analyzing textual material from sentences, answers to open-ended questions on questionnaires, expository texts, and verbatim transcripts. These principles are then extended to show how to abstract category assignments for this type of textual material. The discussion identifies computerized systems and data resources used in the application of these principles.
Amsler, R.A. (1980). The structure of the Merriam-Webster pocket dictionary Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas , Austin.
2.
Burstein, J., Kaplan, R., Wolff, S., & Lu, C. (1996). Using lexical semantic information techniques to classify free responses In E. Viegas & M. Palmer (Eds.), Breadth and depth of semantic lexicons. Workshop Sponsored by the Special Interest Group on the Lexicon. Santa Cruz, CA: Association for Computational Linguistics.
3.
Chapman, R. L. (Ed.). (1992). Roget's international thesaurus (5thed.). New York: HarperCollins.
4.
Chomsky, N. (1956). Three models for the description of languageIRE Transactions PGIT, 2, 113-124.
5.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntaxCambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6.
CL Research. (in press). DIMAP-3 users manualGaithersburg, MD: Author.
7.
Davis, A.R. (1996). Lexical semantics and linking in the hierarchical lexicon Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University .
8.
Evens, M., Litowitz, B., Markowitz, J., Smith, R., & Werner, O. (1980). Lexical-semantic relations: A comparative surveyEdmonton, Canada: Linguistic Research, Inc.
9.
Fillmore, C.J. (1968). The case for case In E. Bach & R. Harms (Eds.), Umversals in linguistic theory (pp. 1-90). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
10.
Jackendoff, R.S. (1972). Semantic interpretation in generative grammarCambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11.
Katz, J.J., & Fodor, J.A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theoryLanguage, 39, 170-210.
12.
Kucera, H., & Francis, W.N. (1967). Computenzed dictionary of present-day American EnglishProvidence, RI: Brown University Press.
13.
Laffal, J. (1995, October). A concept analysis of Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's TravelsComputers and the Humanities, pp. 339-361.
14.
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigationChicago: University of Chicago Press.
15.
Litkowski, K.C. (1978). Models of the semantic structure of dictionariesAmerican Journal of Computational Lcnguistics (Microfiche 81), 25-74.
16.
Litkowski, K.C. (1997, April). Desiderata for tagging with WordNet synsets and MCCA categoriesPaper presented at 4th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics Special Interest Group on the Lexicon, Washington, DC.
17.
Litkowski, K.C., & Harris, M.D. (1997). Category development using complete semantic networks (Technical Report, vol. 97-01). Gaithersburg, MD: CL Research.
18.
Markowitz, J., Ahlswede, T., & Evens, M. (1986, June 10-13). Semantically significant patterns in dictionary definitionsPaper presented at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, New York, NY
McTavish, D.G., Litkowski, K.C., & Schrader, S. (1997). A computer content analysis approach to measuring social distance in residential organizations for older peopleSocial Science Computer Review, 15(2), 170-180.
Miller, G.A., Beckwith, R., Fellbaum, C., Gross, D., & Miller, K.J. (1990). Introduction to WordNet: An on-line lexical databaseInternational Journal of Lexicography, 3(4), 235-244.
23.
Nida, E.A. (1975). Componential analysis ofmeaningThe Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.
24.
Quillian, M.R. (1968). Semantic memory In M. Minsky (Ed.), Semantic information processing (pp. 216-255). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
25.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English languageLondon: Longman.
26.
Schank, R.C. (1975). Conceptual information processingAmsterdam: North-Holland.
27.
Schank, R.C., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understandingHillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
28.
U.S. General Accounting Office. (1993, October). Developing and using questionnaires (GAO/PEMD-10.1.7Washington, DC: Author.
29.
Whissell, C. (1996). Traditional and emotional stylometric analysis of the songs of Beatles Paul McCartney and John LennonComputers and the Humanities, 30(3), 257-265.
30.
Winograd, T. (1972). Understanding natural languageNew York: Academic Press.
