Burghard B. Rieger:
In: Hoppenbrouwers, G./Seuren, P./Weijters, A. (Eds.): Meaning and the Lexicon. Dordrecht (Foris Publications) 1985, pp. 387--400.}
Current semantic theories of word meanings and/or world knowledge
representation consider memory in human or artificial systems of cognition
and/or understanding a highly complex structure of interrelated concepts.
The cognitive principles underlying these structures are poorly understood
yet. However, the work of
psychologists, AI-researchers, and linguists active in that spectrum appears
to be determined by their respective discipline's general line of approach
rather than by consequences drawn from these approaches' intersecting
results in their common field of interest.
In linguistic semantics, cognitive psychology, and knowledge
representation most of the necessary data concerning lexical, semantic and/or
external world information is still provided introspectively.
Thus, these approaches - by definition - can only map what of the world's
fragment under investigation is already known to the analysts. Being basically
interpretative and in want of operational control, such knowledge
representations will not be restricted to undisputed
informational structures which consequently can be mapped onto accepted and
well established (concept-hierarchical, logically deductive) formats. These, however,
lack the flexibility and dynamics of more constructive model
structures which are needed for automatic meaning analysis and representation
from input texts to allow for learning components which build up and/or modify a
system's own knowledge, however shallow and vague that may appear
compared to human understanding.
Based on the algorithmic analysis of discourse that real speakers/writers
produce in actual situations of performed or intended communication on a
certain subject domain, the present approach makes essential use of procedural
means to map fuzzy word meanings and their connotative interrelations in the
format of conceptual stereotypes in semantic space. Their varying dependencies constitute
dynamic dispositions that render only those concepts accessible which may -
within differing contexts differently - be considered relevant under a
specified perspective or aspect. Thus - under the notion of lexical relevance
and semantic disposition - a new meaning relation may operationally be defined
between elements in a conceptual representation system which in itself may
empirically be reconstructed from natural language discourse.
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