1. A method for automatic linguistic indexing of images, said method comprising the steps of: establishing a database of statistical models using a statistical modeling process, wherein the database is accessible by the computer, and each of the statistical models represents a predetermined semantic category; associating a set of index terms with each statistical model in the database, wherein the set of index terms provides a description for the predetermined semantic category; extracting a plurality of feature vectors from an image to be indexed; statistically comparing the plurality of feature vectors extracted from the image to be indexed to the statistical models in the database; determining a set of statistical models from the database that are statistically similar to the plurality of feature vectors extracted from the image to be indexed; and extracting a set of statistically significant index terms from the descriptions of the set of statistical models and using the set of statistically significant indexed terms to index the image.