Here’s what I’d like: an engine where I can search for a place name, and find all the various ways people have referred to a given place. For example, Venice is also Venezia, and in Boccaccio’s Decameron it’s Vinegia. Or, Roland (in Orlando Furioso) goes to an island named Ebuda. And I forget: is this a made-up island? Or does it actually exist? And if it does exist, is it called Ebuda or something else?
I could google it of course, but that’s imperfect more often than not, and often produces a ton of irrelevant results to sift through. Oh, semantic Web, how I dream of you.
This reminds me of a technique (latent semantic
analysis) used to make programs
that can look at text corpora and learn enough to
take SATlike synonym tests better than many
students… The intuition is that
words that are semantically close will get used
in similar contexts (such as cup or glass in
sentences about drinking). If you’re curious
this is a good resource
http://lsi.research.telcordia.com/lsi/LSIpapers.html
and the better articles might be the ones with a
psychological bent, such as the ones on human memory at the bottom of the list. The claim
might be a wee bit over the top…