Topical relevance relationships. I. Why topic matching fails

This is the first in a two‐part series on topical relevance relationships. Part I presents conceptual background; Part II reports on a related empirical study. Since topicality is a major factor in relevance, it is crucial to identify the range of relationship types that occur between the topics of user needs and the topics of user needs and the topics of texts relevant to those needs. We have generally assumed—without particular warrant—that a single relationship type obtains, i.e., that the two topics match. Evidence from the analysis of recall failures, citation analysis, and knowledge synthesis suggests otherwise: topical relevance relationships are not limited to topic matching relationships; to the contrary, in certain circumstances they are quite likely not to be matching relationships. Relationships are one of the two fundamental components of human conceptual systems. Attempts to classify them usually accept a distinction between relationships that occur by virtue of the combination of component units (syntagmatic relationships) and relationships that are built into the language system (paradigmatic relationships). Given the variety of relationship types previously identified, empirical research is needed to determine the subset that actually account for topical relevance. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.