Burgess, C. (1998). From simple associations to the building blocks of language: Modeling meaning in memory with the HAL model. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 30, 188 - 198.

[Invited address at the 1997 Society for Computers in Psychology (SCiP) Conference]

We present a theoretical approach of how simple, episodic associations are transduced into semantic and grammatical categorical knowledge. The approach is implemented in the Hyperspace Analogue to Language model of memory and uses a simple global co-occurrence learning algorithm to encode the context in which words occur. This encoding is the basis for the formation of meaning representations in a high-dimensional context space. A series of results are presented, as well as the argument that this simple process can ultimately provide the language comprehension system with semantic and grammatical information required in the comprehension process.

This paper is the most straightforward introduction to the HAL model and the range of cognitive phenomena that has been investigated to date. Written for a general audiance.