People can know meaning {semantics}|, by association and by insight, as information patterns become meaning.
beginning
The simplest, earliest semantics related noun subjects or objects to verbs, to express causes, sources, goals, locations, and actions [Smith, 1985].
observation
Meaning is about sense qualities, so observables can relate to other observables. Observing systems can compare observations to memorized observations. Comparing develops new concepts and categories. Meaning requires knowing something about property, not just property value. For example, meaning requires knowing something about red, not just intensity. Observations can be true, complete, and consistent. Word sense and reference change over time, position, and context, so there are no necessary or a priori truths.
context
Different languages use different categories and different category divisions. Meaning depends on definitions {lexicography, semantics}. Meaning depends on word terminology used in subjects. The same expression can have different meanings in different situations. Symbols ground only in their symbol systems.
factors
Meaning involves specific factors that words or sentences can have. Words or sentences have semantic vectors, giving factor strengths, typically zero. Perhaps, words and sentences have semantic tensors, giving factor strengths and interactions. Vector or tensor sets are contexts.
ambiguity
Human languages are complex and typically have ambiguity, but formal languages do not allow ambiguity.
word in English
English has 5000 to 10,000 basic words.
People study name origins and meanings {onomatology}.
Words can have multiple related meanings {polysemy}.
Processes {production, speech} {speech production} result in saying what one means. Timed, parallel processes connect words and ideas to reach states or sequences that satisfy phonology, syntax, grammar, and semantics constraints. Mostly-automatic processes use word and phrase probabilities. Feedback and feedforward processes adjust expression to content, and vice versa, and change phonetic structure into pattern of motor-nerve signals to speech muscles.
Words relate to perceptions and actions, how inference rules use them, how they relate to other words, and how grammar uses them {meaning}. Words have linked conceptual, phonological, syntactic, perceptual, and motor structures.
behavior
Meaning can be listener behaviors or reactions, including linguistic reactions. People have behavior patterns {gesture, meaning}, which cause behavior patterns that modify original behavior patterns. Meaning happens in social contexts. Objects do not have intrinsic meaning but only cause behavioral responses.
natural relation
Meaning can depend on natural and physical relations, independent of mind.
causes
Meaning can derive from causes and effects {causal theory of meaning}.
context
Meaningful messages carry context, which receivers use to decipher messages. Meaning can be only useful relative to systems of meanings or relationships. Meaning can be about effects on hearers or readers {tone, speech} {speech tone}, by context or intonation, to arouse, quiet, confuse, or understand. Meaning can be reference and sense understanding.
conventions
Cause-and-effect, similarity, and other relation concepts are social conventions {nomos}. Signs depend on social conventions and minds.
factors
Meaning can involve special factors or features. Factors can interact. Words, sentences, or paragraphs can have or not have factors or have them in different degrees.
mental states
Meaning can involve similarities and differences among mental states.
pattern recognition
Meaning can be pattern recognition. Objects have associated actions and attributes, which are necessary or sufficient conditions. Meaning is not perception, idea, description, or intention.
indexing
Meaning can involve indexing or labeling.
representation and movement correlation
Meaning can be relations that correlate changes or body movements with brain-representation changes. Perception and action always correlate. Motor behaviors and sense generalizations and distinctions evolved in tandem. Decisions depend on meaning.
association
Meaning can be relations among situations, events, or objects and so are classifications or associations. Distinguishing signs can carry meaning about something else, such as act of fleeing. Distinguishing marks can have meaning by convention, such as the word "flee". Meaning can be all words or object associations.
sense qualities
Sense qualities provide symbol references and meaning. Feelings and perceptions have meaning based on sense qualities. Concepts have meaning derived from feelings and perceptions.
shapes
Meaning can derive from similarities of written shapes to natural shapes {picture theory of meaning}.
sounds
Meaning can derive from speech-sound and natural-sound similarities {onomatopoeic theory of meaning}.
symbol
Symbol meaning can be relations to other symbols, which include perceptual, behavioral, and logical information. On the other hand, because symbols themselves have no meaning, relations among symbols have no meaning. Perhaps, semantic data is only syntax and representation, because everything follows laws.
sentence meaning
Sentence meaning is new information about environment. Sentence context, including grammar, determines information and changes with new sentences or words.
statement meaning
Statements are either true or false, must not be vague or ambivalent, must not be paradoxes, and must refer to existing things and events. However, most seeming statements are not statements, because they use words with different meanings in different contexts.
propositions
Meaning can be propositional statements about objects. Meaning can be about sentence types: command, statement, or question.
Meaning is about kinship, color, flora, fauna, weights, measures, military, money, morals, or aesthetics {domain, meaning} {meaning domain}.
Brain has innate fundamental concepts and combination and inference rules {meaning postulate}. Innate grammar has paradigm and syntax and can construct new sense perceptions, beliefs, and memories.
Attribute or characteristic sets {property list} can give word meaning. Properties do not change, do not interact, and are separate and independent.
Meaning is communication, speaking, writing, and social-interaction uses {use theory of meaning}.
Mental processes {comprehension, linguistics} find language meaning.
Speakers code understanding of physical and social world into mental representations {conceptual structure, semantics}, including perceptions and behavioral patterns. Conceptual structure is independent of language.
Children and adults interpret what they hear based on current situation, speaker intention, and audience {context, semantics}. If they understand situation, they can use language appropriate to that situation.
First-person judgments {first-person judgment} are judgments about humans in general, not just about speaker.
Denotation relates word or phrase to world part, aspect, or situation {reference, semantics}. All languages refer to things and events. Different symbolic representations can use different languages [Black, 1962] [Butterfield, 1986] [Chomsky, 2000] [Deacon, 1997] [Fodor and Lepore, 1992] [Fodor, 1975] [Fodor, 1987] [Fodor, 1990] [Fodor, 1994] [Geschwind and Levitsky, 1972] [Gunderson, 1975] [Lakoff, 1987] [Loewer and Rey, 1991] [Millikan, 1984] [Millikan, 1993] [Pinker, 1997] [Peacocke, 1983] [Pinker, 2002] [Rey, 1991] [Rey, 1993].
Demonstratives {demonstrative} involving perception have no direct reference or sense to another person. Demonstratives involving first person have direct reference and sense to person. Demonstratives involving second persons, third persons, or objects require sense to determine meaning.
Contexts, words, or phrases have references {intension, semantics}| {intensionality}. Intensional things do not have to be true or exist. In languages {intensional language}, extension can fail, because context does not allow identical sets to substitute. Contexts, words, or phrases also have sense or meaning.
Children learn difference between "you" and "I" and so self {person, semantics}. Children learn about themselves by understanding their relations to other things, not just by association, imitation, or frequency.
Dani (New Guinea) has two colors {color words}: black-blue-green {cool color} and white-red-yellow {warm color}. Languages can have three colors: black, white, and red-yellow. Languages can have four colors: black, blue-green, white, and red-yellow. English has black, brown, purple (violet), blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, white, and gray. Russian has black, brown, purple (violet), blue, light blue {goluboy}, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, white, and gray. There is no known physiological basis for these categories.
References can be about signals that bring referent to mind without causing response {conceptual reference, semantics}, such as category words.
References can be about signals that imitate referent {mimetic reference, semantics}, such as same sounds.
References can be about signals that indicate sign {proxy reference, semantics}, such as alarm calls.
Objects and events {token, semantics} can persist over time, cause phenomena, and be category members. Tokens refer to category, show category-member uses, and define category. Tokens referring to physical objects have many predicates.
Tokens of "I" refer to whoever produced them {token-reflexive rule}. "I" produces both word "I" and concept "I". References of tokens of "I" refer to token, so token-reflexives cannot identify persons.
Propositions represent situations. Propositions overlap {argument overlap} results in understanding.
Environments allow some things and do not allow others {asymmetric counterfactual dependence}, and things have relations. Thoughts causally depend on relations among things.
Statements are either true or false {bivalence}.
Correct signs can have more than one meaning {fallacy of equivocation} {equivocation fallacy}. Signs with more than one meaning can cause errors in thought and language.
Predicates denote subject or set properties {extension, semantics}.
Formal systems can study semantics {formal semantics}. Formal model-theoretic semantics can create models that make language true. Truth-theoretic semantics can find statements that are true for all models. Semantics {possible world semantics} can create fictional models. Situation semantics can study communicators and communication situations.
Meaningful relations {semantic relations} include pairs: origin-destination, action-actor, difference-cause, recipient-method, motive-obstacle, trajectory-instrument, object-vehicle, and time-place [Bilgrami, 1992].
Words and phrases differ {semantic differential} in goodness or badness, strength or weakness, activity or passivity, sentence position, and relation to other words.
Word sets can have common factors {semantic component}. Words have semantic components. No semantic component is in all languages. Language independently determines semantic components.
Objects {homologue}| can have similar structure.
Defining words {definition, semantics} {verbal definition} makes well-formed sound sets and points to objects. Objects have previously caused mental concepts to form in minds through visual or aural sense qualities. Mental concepts are word meaning. However, images are not necessarily concepts, thus requiring additional verbal information.
Words can have circular definitions. Words can have legal definitions.
parts
Definitions can have essential portions {class, definition} and auxiliary portions {modifier, definition}. However, many words cannot be so defined. Words can require several essential or auxiliary parts.
Word sense or context {connotation, semantics}| involves space, time, causes, actions, purposes, explanations, and problems.
References {denotation, definition}| relates words or phrases to world part, aspect, or situation.
To show properties, definition can use examples or sample objects {ostensive definition, semantics}| {explanation by examples}. Ostensive definition can prove supposedly a-priori synthetic statements.
Metaphors {metaphor, semantics} make analogies between two situations.
context
Context explains metaphor, because metaphor purpose was about context, not metaphor's usual meaning.
similarity
Metaphors use similarities between functions and structures, means and ends, conclusions and premises, effects and causes, and bodies and supports.
understanding
Understanding metaphorical language involves different language processes than comprehending literal language. Processes look at context, note that context does not allow literal word interpretation, and look for analogies, metaphors, and figurative language.
Meaning arises from actual-topic and analogous-topic interaction {interaction metaphor}.
Poetic or ornamental language can replace literal language {substitution metaphor}.
Representations represent as evolution designed them to do {bio-functionalism}.
Relation to behavior and/or evolution cause statements to have meaning {biosemantics}.
Brain grammars {Cognitive Grammar} and semantics {Cognitive Semantics} can relate mental representations to language. Cognitive Grammar has rules to link syntactic categories {readjustment rule}, to link syntax and meaning {projection rule}, to link linguistic to non-linguistic concepts {correspondence rule, semantics}, and to infer concepts from other concepts logically, pragmatically, and heuristically.
Word meanings are uses in situations {empirical semantics}.
Meaning depends on possible cognitive uses {functional role semantics} {conceptual role semantics} {inferential role semantics} {procedural semantics}.
To interpret texts, imagining others' experiences, in other locations and times, allows understanding of word and phrase meanings {hermeneutics}|. Physical data alone cannot explain human action, which needs mental-state analysis and interpretation. In studying and understanding, it is important to know writing style, intended audience, problem, and social and historical context. Writing can be formal or informal.
People are entities that make signs {semiotic materialism}: "You are what speaks you."
Sentence meaning is conditions that make sentence true {truth-conditional semantics} {model-theoretic semantics} {Situation Semantics}. Only whole sentences have meaning.
Composition and derivation {parasynthesis} can form words.
Words can have up to three open arguments {conceptual structure, word} {word, conceptual structure}. First argument is entity, such as event, object, or place. Second argument is token or type of event, object, or place. Third argument is relation.
Word parts {kernel, word} hold basic meaning.
Word changes can make words similar to familiar words, without regard to meaning or real etymology {folk etymology}.
People make dictionaries and definitions {lexicography, words}|.
People study words used in subjects {terminology}|.
Average adult English-speaker knows ten to fifteen thousand object names {vocabulary, word}|.
Words {acronym}| can have first letters of phrase words.
Words {antonym}| can mean the opposite of another word.
Words {cognate word} in different languages can have same root.
Words {doublet word} can derive from same word but be different in meaning.
Words {eponym}| can sound similar.
Same word spellings {heteronym}| can have different meanings and/or sounds.
Words {homonym}| can have same spelling and pronunciation as another word but have different meaning.
Words {paronym}| can derive from same word but have different meanings.
People can use names {pseudonym}| instead of real names.
Words {synonym, word}| can mean the same as other words.
Made-up words {ghost word} can have errors in construction.
Words {loan word} can come from another language.
Words {neologism, word}| can be new or have new usages.
Words {partitive, parts}, such as "some", can denote parts.
Names {patronymic}| can identify father.
Terms {natural kind} can be person names or natural substances.
Terms {rigid designator}, such as person names or natural substances, can always mean same thing in physical and all other worlds.
Outline of Knowledge Database Home Page
Description of Outline of Knowledge Database
Date Modified: 2022.0225