PUBLIKASJON NR. 1. Řivin Andersen Lingvistikk og dokumentasjonsbaserte tesauruskonstruksjoner HIT-senterets publikasjonsserie Nr. 1/98. ISBN 82-7283-090-6 Pris: kr. 250,- (Pr. 11.07.2000: Forsendelse kommer i tillegg: Norge kr. 39,-; Norden kr. 50,-; Europa kr. 75,-; andre verdensdeler kr. 120,-)

The main topic of this dissertation is a discussion of what general linguistics can contribute to the theoretical development of research on information and documentation. Chapter 1 describes the mainstreams of modern terminology and LSP research and chapter 2 contains a discussion of traditional terminological conceptual theory contrasted with modern lexical semantic theories. Chapter 3 contains a survey of basic mechanisms of documentary based thesaurus constructions with a discussion of the notion of topic in a text linguistic context. Chapter 4 gives an outline of van Dijks theory of macrostructures, especially his reduction rules. Chapter 5 contains a test of van Dijks rules on a text base grounded on his hypothesis that abstracts of texts can be generated automatically. The conclusion is that his reduction rules are inapplicable in an information retrieval context unless the domains of application are made more explicit and that an inferential mechanism containing important tacit background knowledge is necessary.