Text analysis and basic concept structures

摘要

Information specialists frequently are called upon to analyze unfamiliar subjects. With the growth in volume and topic, specialists will require techniques to deal with textual material rapidly and effectively. This paper describes a method of text analysis designed to facilitate extraction of terms related to a single characteristic or concept. The term extraction is performed by completing the sentence: “The characteristic of interest is described by (—descriptive term—).” Using this method, the analyst can extract attributes of the basic characteristic and terms representing related characteristics. With these two classes of terms, the analyst can build a basic concept structure describing the subject matter. Prior knowledge of the subject is not required. The method is illustrated using pathological descriptions of female genital cancers.