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About the Analogical Thesaurus

• The Analogical Thesaurus is a research product of the Creative Language Systems Group in the Computer Science Dept. of University College Dublin.

  The principal investigator is Tony Veale.

• The Analogical Thesaurus is an index of words and concepts that provides a number of ways, both alphabetic and conceptual, to access a sought-after term or idea.

• This index has been constructed using ideas from research in analogy and metonymy, and from the lexical ontology HowNet.

  Please refer to the publications of the Creative Language Systems Group for more insight.

Using the Analogical Thesaurus

The Analogical Thesaurus supports five modes of term/concept access: Alphabetic, Frame and relation, Taxonomic, Analogy and Metonymy.

Imagine you want to access the term "gladiator", or some analogy for it.

• Alphabetic Access

  1. From the top-level index, choose the Alphabetic index.

  2. From this alphabetic index, choose G.

  3. From the G-index, choose L.

  4. From the GL-index, choose GLA.

  
  You will then be able to choose Gladiator from a list of similarly spelled words.

• Frame-Relation Access

  1. From the top-level index, choose the Agent index. This will allow you to consider all those concepts that have an agentive role in some activity frame.

  2. From this agent index, choose Fight under F, since this is the most obvious frame in which to find Gladiator.

  3. In the Fight-agent index, go to the list of concepts that fill this role.

  4. Choose G to find those fighting agents whose name begins with "g".

  
  You will then be able to choose Gladiator from a list of similarly spelled words.

• Taxonomic Access

  1. From the top-level index, choose the Human index. This will allow you to consider only those concepts that are kinds of people.

  2. From this agent index, choose the role agent. This allows you to consider only human agents.

  3. In the Human-agent index, choose fight-agent under F, since this is the most obvious frame in which to find Gladiator.

  4. Choose G to find those fighting human agents whose name begins with "g".

  
  You will then be able to choose Gladiator from a list of similarly spelled words.

• Analogical Access

  1. Look up the term "Matador", or "Fighting cock", using one of the above access methods.

  2. This should lead you to the entry for Compete-Agent, which provides a listing of all concepts that can be considered to play an agentive role in some competitive activity.

  3. In this Compete-agent index, go to the top of the page to find analogical roles for Compete-Agent.

  4. Choose Fight-agent since fighting and competing are analogous activities.

  
  This will yield a list of analogous concept terms, amongst which you will find Gladiator (under G).

• Metonymic Access

  1. Look up the term "Arena" or "Stadium" using one of the above access methods.

  2. This should lead you to the entry for Compete-Location, which provides a listing of all concepts that can be considered to serve as a location for some competitive activity.

  3. In this Compete-location index, go to the top of the page to find metonymic roles for Compete-Location. These are different roles within the same activity (Compete).

  4. Choose Compete-agent since a gladiator is an agentive concept.

  5. In this Compete-agent index, go to the top of the page to find analogical roles for Compete-Agent.

  6. Choose Fight-agent since a Gladiator is an agent who fights in an arena.

  
  This will yield a list of analogous concept terms, amongst which you will find Gladiator (under G).