  A computational model for the acquisition of knowledge from encyclopedic
texts is described. The model has been implemented in a program, called SNOWY,
that reads unedited texts from {\em The World Book Encyclopedia}, and acquires
new concepts and conceptual relations about topics dealing with the dietary
habits of animals, their classifications and habitats. The program is also able
to answer an ample set of questions about the knowledge that it has acquired.
This paper describes the essential components of this model, namely semantic
interpretation, inferences and representation, and ends with an evaluation of
the performance of the program, a sample of the questions that it is able to
answer, and its relation to other programs of similar nature.
