--- title: "David Weir — author profile and papers" description: "David Weir, University of Helsinki: 4 papers on Elamur Research (1987–2014), h-index 43 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our…" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-weir/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-weir/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / David Weir # David Weir David Weir works on the formal and statistical study of language. The earliest paper here asks what grammar formalisms say about structure, not only about the strings they generate. The later papers turn to [lexical semantics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/lexical-semantics/): how distributional evidence, meaning the contexts in which words occur in large parsed corpora, can show which words are similar in meaning and how they relate. Across both strands, the work tends to build general frameworks in which competing proposals can be compared on shared terms. It draws on [syntax and grammar formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/syntax-grammar/) and on ideas borrowed from [information retrieval](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/information-retrieval/). The most cited paper here is [Characterizing Structural Descriptions Produced by Various Grammatical Formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/shanker-1987-characterizing-structural-descriptions-produced-various/) from 1987. It compares formalisms such as context-free grammars, Tree Adjoining Grammars, Head Grammars and Indexed Grammars by looking at the trees they assign and at their derivation histories. On that basis it groups several different-looking systems together. Two later papers with Julie Weeds develop co-occurrence retrieval. [A General Framework for Distributional Similarity](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2003-general-framework-distributional-similarity/) (2003) and [Co-occurrence Retrieval](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2005-co-occurrence-retrieval-flexible-framework/) (2005) treat word similarity as a retrieval task. They score how much of one word's contextual features another word covers using precision and recall, and they show that several existing measures fall out as special cases of one tunable family. The newest paper here, [Learning to Distinguish Hypernyms and Co-Hyponyms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2014-learning-distinguish-hypernyms-co-hyponyms/) (2014), takes up a question the earlier frameworks pointed towards: telling apart asymmetric relations, where one word is more general than the other, from symmetric ones between sibling terms. It trains classifiers on combined word vectors built from parsed Wikipedia text. It also proposes evaluation safeguards that keep test words out of training, so that a model cannot simply memorise which words tend to be general. Weir's papers here are connected with the [University of Sussex](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-sussex/), where the distributional work with [Julie Weeds](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/julie-weeds/) and [Daoud Clarke](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/daoud-clarke/) belongs. The earlier grammar-formalism research was written with [K. Vijay-Shanker](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/k-vijay-shanker/) and [Aravind Joshi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aravind-joshi/) and is linked to the [University of Pennsylvania](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-pennsylvania/). David Weir has 4 papers in our library, in 1987–2014, most of them on [Lexical semantics & word embeddings](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/lexical-semantics/), [Information retrieval & search](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/information-retrieval/), [Syntax & grammar formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/syntax-grammar/); often with [Julie Weeds](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/julie-weeds/), [Aravind Joshi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aravind-joshi/), [Daoud Clarke](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/daoud-clarke/). 4 papers in our library · 1987–2014 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5023718997) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6986-0517) · [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55403679) · [**h-index 43**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5023718997) · [196 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5023718997) · [10,864 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5023718997&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 4 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-weir/#papers) · [🔗 369 citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-weir/cited-by/) · [2 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Star rank #2004](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/21/#star-2004) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=David+Weir) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=David+Weir) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=David+Weir) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=David+Weir) ## Affiliations [🎓**University of Helsinki** Helsinki · Finland 2012–2026 · 58 papersEmployment 2016–2018Employment since 2019*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-helsinki/) · [🔬**Helsinki Institute of Physics** Helsinki · Finland 2011–2026 · 50 papersEmployment 2011–2014Employment since 2019*current*](https://ror.org/01x2x1522) · [🎓**University of Sussex** Brighton · United Kingdom 1992–2021 · 57 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-sussex/) · [🎓**Imperial College London** London · United Kingdom 1985–2014 · 14 papersEducation 2007–2011](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/imperial-college-london/) · [🎓**University of Stavanger** Stavanger · Norway 2014–2017 · 11 papersEmployment 2014–2016](https://ror.org/02qte9q33) · [🎓**University of Oxford** Oxford · United Kingdom 1986–1993 · 6 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-oxford/) · [🎓**University of Nottingham** Nottingham · United Kingdom 2019–2021 · 5 papersEmployment 2019](https://ror.org/01ee9ar58) · [🎓**University of Pennsylvania** Philadelphia · United States 1986–1988 · 4 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-pennsylvania/) · [🎓**Northwestern University** Evanston · United States 1990–1991 · 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/northwestern-university/) From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 8 more institutions on single bylines are not listed. ## Topics [Lexical semantics & word embeddings (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/lexical-semantics/) · [Information retrieval & search (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/information-retrieval/) · [Syntax & grammar formalisms (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/syntax-grammar/) ## Works by year ### 2010s [**2014** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2014-learning-distinguish-hypernyms-co-hyponyms/) ### 2000s [**2005** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2005-co-occurrence-retrieval-flexible-framework/) · [**2003** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2003-general-framework-distributional-similarity/) ### 1980s [**1987** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/shanker-1987-characterizing-structural-descriptions-produced-various/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[Characterizing Structural Descriptions Produced by Various Grammatical Formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/shanker-1987-characterizing-structural-descriptions-produced-various/)** *(1987 · 354 citations)* Most comparisons of grammar formalisms look only at the string languages they generate (weak generative capacity). 2. **[Learning to Distinguish Hypernyms and Co-Hyponyms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2014-learning-distinguish-hypernyms-co-hyponyms/)** *(2014 · 242 citations)* Distributional thesauri mix many relations among a word's nearest neighbours, including hypernyms, co-hyponyms and other related words. 3. **[Co-occurrence Retrieval: A Flexible Framework for Lexical Distributional Similarity](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2005-co-occurrence-retrieval-flexible-framework/)** *(2005 · 198 citations)* Many NLP methods rely on words being distributionally similar, but there is no single agreed definition of this similarity, so many competing measures exist. 4. **[A General Framework for Distributional Similarity](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/weeds-2003-general-framework-distributional-similarity/)** *(2003 · 198 citations)* Distributional similarity measures are widely used to find words with related meanings, but the literature offers many competing formulas with little to say about why one should beat another. ## Also in our library 2 more works of theirs are in our library without a page here yet; they will appear as we publish them. ## Co-authors here 4 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Julie Weeds](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/julie-weeds/) ×3 - [Aravind Joshi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aravind-joshi/) - [Daoud Clarke](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/daoud-clarke/) - [K. Vijay-Shanker](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/k-vijay-shanker/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 369 times (of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read); [22 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-weir/cited-by/).