This demo shows which words are semantically related. Type a word in the empty box and click 'Search' (names are also allowed). The result will be a network of semantically related words. Double click on any of the words to get their nearest neighbours.

At the bottom of the page you can zoom in and rotate.

This demo resulted from research within the framework of the NWO project: Question Answering for Dutch using Dependency Relations. Large quantities of text were searched to automatically find semantically related words using three methods. This resulted in three demo's: a syntax-based demo, an alignment-based demo, and a proximity-based demo.

The proximity-based method uses large quantities of Dutch newspaper text. It measures which words are often found with the same words in a sentence. The idea behind this method is that words that appear in the same contexts might be semantically related, more precisely, related to the same subject field.

More background info can be found in the thesis of Lonneke van der Plas, in the on-line presentation (on ISLA TV), or in the web article of KennisLink (in Dutch).

The interface was made by Ismail Fahmi within the framework of the SWHi project (Semantic Web for History).