[Lexicog] Digest Number 1050

[Mike Maxwell]

Ronald Moe wrote:
> Words tend to cluster around hubs. This is the basis of a semantic
> domain—a hub with a cluster of related words. As I’ve studied
> semantic domains, I’ve come to several conclusions. For instance I’ve
> known for a long time that words were not uniformly distributed, but
> tend to cluster. 
 > ...
 > Another puzzling feature of the lexicon is that high-frequency,
 > mono-morphemic lexemes tend to be hubs.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around this...what does it mean for one word 
to be a 'hub', rather than another?  I.e. how do we know which words are 
hubs?

And what does it mean for words to cluster around hubs--that there is 
some kind of semantic empty space between clusters, like the more or 
less empty space between galaxies?  The latter can be measured in light 
years, and the average distance between stars in a galaxy is much less 
than the average distance between galaxies (or between a star in one 
galaxy and the nearest star in a neighboring galaxy).  What is the 
metric for measuring the space between word clusters, i.e. how do we 
know that the clusters don't abut each other or even overlap?
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu

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