Burghard B. Rieger:
Definition of Terms, Word Meaning, and Knowledge Structure.
On some problems of semantics from a computational view of linguistics
(Keynote Address) in: Czap, H./Galinski, C. (eds.): Terminology and Knowledge Engineering. Proceedings Intern. Congress on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (Volume 2), Frankfurt/M. (Indeks) 1988, pp. 25-41
Abstract
In Linguistics the object
of research is Natural Language, the methods employed are those
of formal-theoretic and/or quantitative-empirical analysis, description
or modelling,
and the aims or objectives that are pursued by such activities,
are to
understand how Natural Languages serve the function they accomplish,
i.e.
being understood as a means to convey meaning and knowledge
in an incredibly flexible and altogether quite reliable way.
The computational view of linguistics is closely connected with possibilities which the
advent of computers as not only number-crunching but symbol-processing
machines has produced.
Most researchers in semantics agree on the
common basis of three major problems presented by the study
of natural
language meaning, namely the fundamental assumption of meaning
to be (or
be reconstructable as) some relational structure.
This assumption, however, may differently be addressed:
firstly, as the denotational aspect of how
the signs,
words, and sentences of a language are related to the entities
(objects
and/or processes) they refer to in the external world, constituting
referential meaning as a system of extra-lingual relations;
secondly, what is known as the connotational
aspect of how
signs, words, and sentences of a language are related to
one another,
constituting structural meaning as a system of sub-systems of
intra-lingual
relations, and
thirdly, what is referred to as the dynamic aspect
of how signs,
words, and sentences of a language are related to functions
which instantiate varying restrictions on possible choices
of (referential and/or
structural) meaning representations, constituting procedural
meaning as a
system of procedures that operate on and simultaneously reorganise
the
conceptual data of memory and/or knowledge.
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