The pertinence of pattern i P to a word pair j j Y X : is the expected relational similarity between a word pair k k Y X : , randomly selected from W according to the probability distribution ) : , and the word pair can be interpreted as the degree to which the pair k k Y X : is representative (i.e., typical) of pairs that fit the pattern i P .
i P is pertinent to j j Y X : if highly typical word pairs k k Y X : for the pattern i P tend to be relationally similar to j j Y X : .