The question of context window size is raised (but not answered) by Warren Weaver in his Memorandum from 1949, under the heading "Meaning and Context":
*If one examines the words in a book, one at a time as through an opaque mask with a hole in it one word wide, then it is obviously impossible to determine ... the meaning of the words. "Fast" may mean "rapid"; or it may mean "motionless"; and there is no way of telling which.* *But, if one lengthens the slit in the opaque mask, until one can see not only the central word in question but also say N words on either side, then if N is large enough one can unambiguously decide the meaning of the central word. ...* *The practical question is: "What minimum value of N will, at least in a tolerable fraction of cases, lead to the correct choice of meaning for the central word?"* (in Locke & Booth, Machine Translation of Languages, 1955, p. 20) Regards, Peter Kolb Am Mi., 6. Jan. 2021 um 08:25 Uhr schrieb Andras Kornai <and...@kornai.com>: > When I started to learn about these things, it was Received Wisdom that to > disambiguate a word, or to provide a translation equivalent, a context of 3 > words on each side of the target are almost always sufficient. > (Counterexamples could always be constructed, but for the statistical > majority of the cases three on each side would be fine.) But where does > this piece of wisdom originate? Weaver? Salton? Sparck-Jones? Bar-Hillel? > Any pointers to the literature, including pointers to counterarguments, > would be greatly appreciated. > > Thank you, > Andras Kornai > _______________________________________________ > Mt-list site list > Mt-list@eamt.org > http://lists.eamt.org/mailman/listinfo/mt-list >
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