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What do you think about this definition:
Meaning is association between symbol and sense or idea.
For some reason I did not find this page on my earlier trials. I do not think that meaning and information are synonyms in the way it is put down in the article.
Information and meaning are similar to the extent that both need a recepient to attribute meaning/information to something that such a recepient is looking at for meaning/information.
Whether you find meaning/information in anything studied depends greatly on the structure and content of your own experience/knowledge, the amount of which may not be measured as easily as in a hardware in binary terms.
Man is an animal characterised by his state determined by various needs, one of which is looking for meaning almost everywhere. As a corollary to this condition man assumes that meaning lies behind the surface, and there is a hiden message of Nature out of the range of human perception. Hence the analysis of the world by intrusion and force using a constantly improving precision technology of targeting and shooting on anything with a promise of economic gain.
Now meaning is most frequently attributed to verbal cues that are used to tag experience (mainly pictoral, or multi channeled in nature), words that are thus also devoid of context and details, except for the fragments that are mentally preserved by asociation, hoping that similar experience will be evoked in the listener on hearing such verbal cues and establishing thereby a seeming synchronisation of the focus of minds of the individuals.
Now in explaining the meaning of a word (verbal cues) by collecting them into a list for ease of reference/locating and placing in proximity other words that may be considered a recursion or another form of tagging of the same thing, one tries to reconstruct the original context of that verbal clue, the product of abstraction, and tries to reengineer the lost context that was not possible to share otherwise, but by abstracting (using a language).
Mental processes are pretty fast for us to pin down sequences of operations, but it appears that that you have intent first, preceeding formulasing your thought, then ample time to articulate what you can from your collection of experience tagged with verbal cues. Should you have experience that others do not share, or focus that is wider/narrower than what other people can handle you will have difficulties in communicating your thoughts, one of the most fearful experience of humans as a social being.
thread suspended for the time being Apogr 09:23, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Meaning is the core concept of semantics which still owes us a palatable definition of the term. Some recognized linguists tend to conclude that meaning is a relational term, or an (equity) relation expressed in abstract terms. Meaning is then best conceived as a function or equation, the two sides of which are considered to be equal, if not identical for some practical purpose. (This kind of approach is not unique in human practice, think of the example of the definition of fair market value. In my recollections it goes on like this: fair market value is a sum that a willing and serious buyer is ready to pay to a willing seller who is not acting under any constraints or force to sell its ware.) The function metaphor is widely used for the description of the syntax of formal languages. The BNF (Backus-Naur Form) notation and recursion discuss the subject in sufficient details to enable you to see the point. Meaning of verbal expressions, however is subject to chunking, the process of finding the right delimiters in the string of verbal cues. When you do chunking, in fact, you divide the input in two: the left side of the function, and the right side of the function, which rewrites metaphorically as focus and domus, or the symbol that you want the meaning of, and the (immediate) context that you need to consider, but keep separate. This process may also be called as abstraction. In most cases we rely on visual input that is not sequential, a feature we display in thinking and remembering, all taking place in time, therefore has to be rearranged, simplified, condensed or compressed, and linked, i.e. abstracted in short to fit the working of our mind. Thus context is essential for the understanding of meaning, yet there is no plausible theory or classification of context available for the time being. Obviously, context includes the mind of the reader or the listener as well so it is exposed to the interpretation of the interpreter (remember recursion?). There are thousand examples of how chunking and context influence meaning, a very telling word indeed. The meaning of meaning suggests two noteworthy points: a) meaning as exposed in the word, text, etc. spoken, written, etc. and the meaning (see intent) of the communicator, which is hidden, but may be inferred from various contextual clues. In the current Western civilization the issue of meaning is very well consolidated in a commonplace scene of any western where there are two guys facing each other in a challenge. The rules are clear but paradoxical: the one who reaches for his pistol first is a paranoid, because he assumes that the other guy wants to kill him. On the other hand, whoever shoots the other one is a psychopath, by the mere fact of killing another man. Since the two guys stand wide apart, normally it is impossible to make a fair judgment of what is happening and in what sequence. Conclusion? They are both sick and need medical attention. So much about one (pragmatic) aspect of the theme of current research into intentional programming (see. interview with Mr. Charles Simonyi)
Meaning is an attribute of some external stimulus in terms of relevance to a living organism that the later establishes with the help of its mental capacities. (Attempt to define the term at an abstract level.)
It is a meaningful ’’’relation’’’ between the external stimulus and an organism ’’wired” to look for a meaning’’ and equipped with a capacity to make up any fragmented stimulus into a meaningful „message”, or a looming condition to adjust to. (Taking another turn)
Well, just rwead my garbled words and check out...
Meaning is established as a function or equation between two items so related, the two sides of which are considered to be equal, or identical for some practical purpose. For example in giving a name to an object, or translating any passages from one language into another, or finding a reason for an effort, etc. (Getting more specific now)
I do not need to quote big names, but accept any reference as an addition. Symbols and things may be equally be used as metaphors. In fact, all the linguistic symbols are metaphors, by the very anture of the use of symbols. (Rememebr recursion)
(Meaning is subject to common agreement, similarly to other definitions, such as that of a fair market value which is a sum that a willing and serious buyer is ready to pay to a willing seller who is not acting under any constraints or force to sell its ware. (or about)
Fine with me.
The above function metaphor is widely used for the description of the syntax of formal languages. The BNF (Backus-Naur Form) notation and recursion discuss the subject in sufficient details to enable you to see the point. Therefore to represent meaning one should indicate the equivalence between the two elements selected.
Thank you, accepted.
On the left side of the expression there may be hundreds of items, mainly related to communication, the meaning of which may be described in more details (specific levels):
Means, modalities, genre and media of communications, including
I am trying to point out that the number of possible contexts that govern meaning is huge, just as many as the number of entities that meaning of which is sought.
Now this is not research at all. Just lateral thinking in action. As a rule I am interested in defining lexicon entry words that extend oevr specialisations, that are used in various disciplines , quite often by the way of analogy, but more importantly with a chance to produce short-cuts to serv cross fertilisation among disciplines.
Some of the examples I have already found and tried to pin point include copying, translating, orderlyness (sorting, ordering) and a few others.
Thank you for the trouble you have taken.
Meaning of verbal expressions is subject to chunking, the process of finding the right delimiters in the string of verbal cues. When you do chunking, in fact, you divide the input in two: the left side of the function, and the right side of the function, which rewrites metaphorically as focus and domus, or the symbol that you want the meaning of, and the (immediate) context that you need to consider, but keep separate.
In contrast to disambiguation (which concerns homonyms only e.g. People Like Maria) Chunking may take larger segments or chunks that should be interpreted as one (e.g. idioms, phrasal verbs, syntagmas, nominal phrases denoting one entity, etc.)
All that is a function of the orientation, size of the immediate memory of the observer and his mental facilities. If you speak two languages, you can read a string (word or longer stretches) once in language A, and another time in language B. This process may also be called as abstraction.
In most cases we rely on visual input that is not sequential, a feature we display in thinking and remembering, all taking place in time, therefore has to be rearranged, simplified, condensed or compressed, and linked, i.e. abstracted in short to fit the working of our mind.
Thus context is essential for the understanding of meaning, yet there is no plausible theory or classification of context available for the time being. Obviously, context includes the mind of the reader or the listener as well so it is exposed to the interpretation of the interpreter (do you remember recursion?)
There are thousand examples of how chunking and context influence meaning, a very telling word indeed. The meaning of meaning suggests two noteworthy points: a) meaning as exposed in the word, text, etc. spoken, written, etc. and the meaning (see intent) of the communicator, which is hidden, but may be inferred from various contextual clues.
In the current Western civilization the issue of meaning is very well consolidated in a commonplace scene of any western where there are two antagonists facing each other in a challenge. The rules are clear but paradoxical: the one who reaches for his pistol first is a paranoid, because he assumes that the other guy wants to kill him.
On the other hand, whoever shoots the other one is a psychopath, by the mere fact of killing another man. Since the two antagonists stand wide apart, normally it is impossible to make a fair judgment of what is happening and in what sequence. What is the conclusion? The conclusion is that meaning is also subject to the urgency of making a decision, the most likely moment when it is the same thing as information. In other situations whether you find meaning/information in anything studied depends greatly on the structure and content of your own experience/knowledge, the amount of which may not be measured as easily as in a hardware in binary terms.
In the above example the two antagonist are tube-sighted, and are not concerned with anything but the movement of their opponent. Information and meaning are similar to the extent that both need a recipient to attribute meaning/information to something that such a recipient is looking at for meaning/information.
Man is an animal characterized by his state determined by various needs, one of which is looking for meaning almost everywhere. As a corollary to this condition man assumes that meaning lies behind the surface, and there is a hidden message of Nature out of the range of human perception. Hence the analysis of the world by intrusion and force using a constantly improving precision technology of targeting and shooting on anything with a promise of economic gain.
Now meaning is most frequently attributed to verbal cues that are used to tag experience (mainly pictorial, or multi channeled in nature), words that are thus also devoid of context and details, except for the fragments that are mentally preserved by association, hoping that similar experience will be evoked in the listener on hearing such verbal cues and establishing thereby a seeming synchronization of the focus of minds of the individuals.
Now in explaining the meaning of a word (verbal cues) by collecting them into a list for ease of reference/locating and placing in proximity other words that may be considered a recursion or another form of tagging of the same thing, one tries to reconstruct the original context of that verbal clue, the product of abstraction, and tries to reengineer the lost context that was not possible to share otherwise, but by abstracting (using a language).
Mental processes are pretty fast for us to pin down sequences of operations, but it appears that that you have intent first, preceding formulating your thought, then ample time to articulate what you can from your collection of experience tagged with verbal cues. Should you have experience that others do not share, or focus that is wider/narrower than what other people can handle you will have difficulties in communicating your thoughts, one of the most fearful experience of humans as a social being.
Note. I am to be blamed for all this garbage is, and I am ready to consider your points and advice.
Apogr 15:35, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Meaning is the result of chunking whereby the interpreter of the meaning perceiving a whole set of signals separates a seqence (chunk) that he/she finds meaningful (relavant to his/her existence (awareness of) - and complete (a whole) thus an input to be used for orientation.
In finding the meaning of/in verbal input chunking is done to arrive at the shortest/smallest meaningful unit of the string of symbols, which is conventionally called a word or a lexeme or a morpheme, yet it is not.
The main point is that in chunking one should be able to see simultaneously the whole and the chunk of the whole, just as in slicing bread, where you get a whole slice of bread, a chunk, yet a whole (a slice).
What I mean is that in defining meaning (an attempt to restore a picture, a whole) you work with two focuses and in toggle mode. You have something in focus and you have the context (domus). Or less metaphoric examples: 983745969374 is a number and you will probably not be able to remeber it, becasue you have nowhere t conncet it.
But if yu know that is my phone number, then you feel you got the picture, and may decide to record it , etc. Now
Disambiguation is/should not be done just at word level (homonyms, senses) but longer streches, phrases, clusters until you arrive at an "alphabetic identifier" of some denoted entity.
Consequently, it is erroneous to make a (single) word to be the entry word/item or a unit of treaty of a dictionary and/or a lexicon, which is supposed to be a collection of knowledge associated with not words as lingustic units, but chunks of reality described.
This is a note to the editors, who are very much against anything but taxoboxing, despite the fact that the general reader may need a compass on such difficult issues, including thinking, a stub for over two years in wikipedia... you can see now why.
Apogr 05:52, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Introduction to meaning: two subjects:
recursion and fractals - without them it amy be futile to see the woods behind the trees....
Apogr 06:34, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
But it may also be very enlightening to read parsing, the analysis of the syntax of formal language, together with BNF, thyt I could use to illustrate my point, provided taht it were bnot too technical to lay (non computer)people.
This is what you get n the internet for meaning: The encyclopedic bit must look familiar :-)
noun: the idea that is intended (Example: "What is the meaning of this proverb?") noun: the message that is intended or expressed or signified (Example: "What is the meaning of this sentence") See mean
Encyclopedia article
Meaning, studied in philosophy of language and linguistics, as well as being central to the fields of literary theory and critical theory and the philosophical field of epistemology, is a difficult concept to pin down. (continued at Wikipedia)
1. I have read a whole book on meanning by the most famous Hungarian linguist on the subject and there is no single definition of meaning at all. At one junction he goes as far as saying that "meaning is a relation". In our univeristies it is taught that meaning is the set of rules of using a symbol.
You should appreciate that I am trying to fill up a gap here and I am not likely to come up with references, partly, because I am certain that meaning is a function of recursion, a claim that may cost "my life", because it is like saying "the king is nude". Also, meaning can be beautifully illustrated by bringing up the subject of fractals, that explains that yu have various distances from the entity you want to define the meaning of, but in between two established scales, your focus is blurred, and you cannot grasp anything verbal, nor pictoral for that mater. Thinking seems to be pictorally driven, and transfer to a verbal plane is a problem of changing bandwidth.
Here are my issues with the new new intro, most of which I'd like to see incorporated into the existing intro:
- Seth Mahoney 02:06, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
What do you think about this definition:
Meaning is association between symbol and sense or idea.
For some reason I did not find this page on my earlier trials. I do not think that meaning and information are synonyms in the way it is put down in the article.
Information and meaning are similar to the extent that both need a recepient to attribute meaning/information to something that such a recepient is looking at for meaning/information.
Whether you find meaning/information in anything studied depends greatly on the structure and content of your own experience/knowledge, the amount of which may not be measured as easily as in a hardware in binary terms.
Man is an animal characterised by his state determined by various needs, one of which is looking for meaning almost everywhere. As a corollary to this condition man assumes that meaning lies behind the surface, and there is a hiden message of Nature out of the range of human perception. Hence the analysis of the world by intrusion and force using a constantly improving precision technology of targeting and shooting on anything with a promise of economic gain.
Now meaning is most frequently attributed to verbal cues that are used to tag experience (mainly pictoral, or multi channeled in nature), words that are thus also devoid of context and details, except for the fragments that are mentally preserved by asociation, hoping that similar experience will be evoked in the listener on hearing such verbal cues and establishing thereby a seeming synchronisation of the focus of minds of the individuals.
Now in explaining the meaning of a word (verbal cues) by collecting them into a list for ease of reference/locating and placing in proximity other words that may be considered a recursion or another form of tagging of the same thing, one tries to reconstruct the original context of that verbal clue, the product of abstraction, and tries to reengineer the lost context that was not possible to share otherwise, but by abstracting (using a language).
Mental processes are pretty fast for us to pin down sequences of operations, but it appears that that you have intent first, preceeding formulasing your thought, then ample time to articulate what you can from your collection of experience tagged with verbal cues. Should you have experience that others do not share, or focus that is wider/narrower than what other people can handle you will have difficulties in communicating your thoughts, one of the most fearful experience of humans as a social being.
thread suspended for the time being Apogr 09:23, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Meaning is the core concept of semantics which still owes us a palatable definition of the term. Some recognized linguists tend to conclude that meaning is a relational term, or an (equity) relation expressed in abstract terms. Meaning is then best conceived as a function or equation, the two sides of which are considered to be equal, if not identical for some practical purpose. (This kind of approach is not unique in human practice, think of the example of the definition of fair market value. In my recollections it goes on like this: fair market value is a sum that a willing and serious buyer is ready to pay to a willing seller who is not acting under any constraints or force to sell its ware.) The function metaphor is widely used for the description of the syntax of formal languages. The BNF (Backus-Naur Form) notation and recursion discuss the subject in sufficient details to enable you to see the point. Meaning of verbal expressions, however is subject to chunking, the process of finding the right delimiters in the string of verbal cues. When you do chunking, in fact, you divide the input in two: the left side of the function, and the right side of the function, which rewrites metaphorically as focus and domus, or the symbol that you want the meaning of, and the (immediate) context that you need to consider, but keep separate. This process may also be called as abstraction. In most cases we rely on visual input that is not sequential, a feature we display in thinking and remembering, all taking place in time, therefore has to be rearranged, simplified, condensed or compressed, and linked, i.e. abstracted in short to fit the working of our mind. Thus context is essential for the understanding of meaning, yet there is no plausible theory or classification of context available for the time being. Obviously, context includes the mind of the reader or the listener as well so it is exposed to the interpretation of the interpreter (remember recursion?). There are thousand examples of how chunking and context influence meaning, a very telling word indeed. The meaning of meaning suggests two noteworthy points: a) meaning as exposed in the word, text, etc. spoken, written, etc. and the meaning (see intent) of the communicator, which is hidden, but may be inferred from various contextual clues. In the current Western civilization the issue of meaning is very well consolidated in a commonplace scene of any western where there are two guys facing each other in a challenge. The rules are clear but paradoxical: the one who reaches for his pistol first is a paranoid, because he assumes that the other guy wants to kill him. On the other hand, whoever shoots the other one is a psychopath, by the mere fact of killing another man. Since the two guys stand wide apart, normally it is impossible to make a fair judgment of what is happening and in what sequence. Conclusion? They are both sick and need medical attention. So much about one (pragmatic) aspect of the theme of current research into intentional programming (see. interview with Mr. Charles Simonyi)
Meaning is an attribute of some external stimulus in terms of relevance to a living organism that the later establishes with the help of its mental capacities. (Attempt to define the term at an abstract level.)
It is a meaningful ’’’relation’’’ between the external stimulus and an organism ’’wired” to look for a meaning’’ and equipped with a capacity to make up any fragmented stimulus into a meaningful „message”, or a looming condition to adjust to. (Taking another turn)
Well, just rwead my garbled words and check out...
Meaning is established as a function or equation between two items so related, the two sides of which are considered to be equal, or identical for some practical purpose. For example in giving a name to an object, or translating any passages from one language into another, or finding a reason for an effort, etc. (Getting more specific now)
I do not need to quote big names, but accept any reference as an addition. Symbols and things may be equally be used as metaphors. In fact, all the linguistic symbols are metaphors, by the very anture of the use of symbols. (Rememebr recursion)
(Meaning is subject to common agreement, similarly to other definitions, such as that of a fair market value which is a sum that a willing and serious buyer is ready to pay to a willing seller who is not acting under any constraints or force to sell its ware. (or about)
Fine with me.
The above function metaphor is widely used for the description of the syntax of formal languages. The BNF (Backus-Naur Form) notation and recursion discuss the subject in sufficient details to enable you to see the point. Therefore to represent meaning one should indicate the equivalence between the two elements selected.
Thank you, accepted.
On the left side of the expression there may be hundreds of items, mainly related to communication, the meaning of which may be described in more details (specific levels):
Means, modalities, genre and media of communications, including
I am trying to point out that the number of possible contexts that govern meaning is huge, just as many as the number of entities that meaning of which is sought.
Now this is not research at all. Just lateral thinking in action. As a rule I am interested in defining lexicon entry words that extend oevr specialisations, that are used in various disciplines , quite often by the way of analogy, but more importantly with a chance to produce short-cuts to serv cross fertilisation among disciplines.
Some of the examples I have already found and tried to pin point include copying, translating, orderlyness (sorting, ordering) and a few others.
Thank you for the trouble you have taken.
Meaning of verbal expressions is subject to chunking, the process of finding the right delimiters in the string of verbal cues. When you do chunking, in fact, you divide the input in two: the left side of the function, and the right side of the function, which rewrites metaphorically as focus and domus, or the symbol that you want the meaning of, and the (immediate) context that you need to consider, but keep separate.
In contrast to disambiguation (which concerns homonyms only e.g. People Like Maria) Chunking may take larger segments or chunks that should be interpreted as one (e.g. idioms, phrasal verbs, syntagmas, nominal phrases denoting one entity, etc.)
All that is a function of the orientation, size of the immediate memory of the observer and his mental facilities. If you speak two languages, you can read a string (word or longer stretches) once in language A, and another time in language B. This process may also be called as abstraction.
In most cases we rely on visual input that is not sequential, a feature we display in thinking and remembering, all taking place in time, therefore has to be rearranged, simplified, condensed or compressed, and linked, i.e. abstracted in short to fit the working of our mind.
Thus context is essential for the understanding of meaning, yet there is no plausible theory or classification of context available for the time being. Obviously, context includes the mind of the reader or the listener as well so it is exposed to the interpretation of the interpreter (do you remember recursion?)
There are thousand examples of how chunking and context influence meaning, a very telling word indeed. The meaning of meaning suggests two noteworthy points: a) meaning as exposed in the word, text, etc. spoken, written, etc. and the meaning (see intent) of the communicator, which is hidden, but may be inferred from various contextual clues.
In the current Western civilization the issue of meaning is very well consolidated in a commonplace scene of any western where there are two antagonists facing each other in a challenge. The rules are clear but paradoxical: the one who reaches for his pistol first is a paranoid, because he assumes that the other guy wants to kill him.
On the other hand, whoever shoots the other one is a psychopath, by the mere fact of killing another man. Since the two antagonists stand wide apart, normally it is impossible to make a fair judgment of what is happening and in what sequence. What is the conclusion? The conclusion is that meaning is also subject to the urgency of making a decision, the most likely moment when it is the same thing as information. In other situations whether you find meaning/information in anything studied depends greatly on the structure and content of your own experience/knowledge, the amount of which may not be measured as easily as in a hardware in binary terms.
In the above example the two antagonist are tube-sighted, and are not concerned with anything but the movement of their opponent. Information and meaning are similar to the extent that both need a recipient to attribute meaning/information to something that such a recipient is looking at for meaning/information.
Man is an animal characterized by his state determined by various needs, one of which is looking for meaning almost everywhere. As a corollary to this condition man assumes that meaning lies behind the surface, and there is a hidden message of Nature out of the range of human perception. Hence the analysis of the world by intrusion and force using a constantly improving precision technology of targeting and shooting on anything with a promise of economic gain.
Now meaning is most frequently attributed to verbal cues that are used to tag experience (mainly pictorial, or multi channeled in nature), words that are thus also devoid of context and details, except for the fragments that are mentally preserved by association, hoping that similar experience will be evoked in the listener on hearing such verbal cues and establishing thereby a seeming synchronization of the focus of minds of the individuals.
Now in explaining the meaning of a word (verbal cues) by collecting them into a list for ease of reference/locating and placing in proximity other words that may be considered a recursion or another form of tagging of the same thing, one tries to reconstruct the original context of that verbal clue, the product of abstraction, and tries to reengineer the lost context that was not possible to share otherwise, but by abstracting (using a language).
Mental processes are pretty fast for us to pin down sequences of operations, but it appears that that you have intent first, preceding formulating your thought, then ample time to articulate what you can from your collection of experience tagged with verbal cues. Should you have experience that others do not share, or focus that is wider/narrower than what other people can handle you will have difficulties in communicating your thoughts, one of the most fearful experience of humans as a social being.
Note. I am to be blamed for all this garbage is, and I am ready to consider your points and advice.
Apogr 15:35, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Meaning is the result of chunking whereby the interpreter of the meaning perceiving a whole set of signals separates a seqence (chunk) that he/she finds meaningful (relavant to his/her existence (awareness of) - and complete (a whole) thus an input to be used for orientation.
In finding the meaning of/in verbal input chunking is done to arrive at the shortest/smallest meaningful unit of the string of symbols, which is conventionally called a word or a lexeme or a morpheme, yet it is not.
The main point is that in chunking one should be able to see simultaneously the whole and the chunk of the whole, just as in slicing bread, where you get a whole slice of bread, a chunk, yet a whole (a slice).
What I mean is that in defining meaning (an attempt to restore a picture, a whole) you work with two focuses and in toggle mode. You have something in focus and you have the context (domus). Or less metaphoric examples: 983745969374 is a number and you will probably not be able to remeber it, becasue you have nowhere t conncet it.
But if yu know that is my phone number, then you feel you got the picture, and may decide to record it , etc. Now
Disambiguation is/should not be done just at word level (homonyms, senses) but longer streches, phrases, clusters until you arrive at an "alphabetic identifier" of some denoted entity.
Consequently, it is erroneous to make a (single) word to be the entry word/item or a unit of treaty of a dictionary and/or a lexicon, which is supposed to be a collection of knowledge associated with not words as lingustic units, but chunks of reality described.
This is a note to the editors, who are very much against anything but taxoboxing, despite the fact that the general reader may need a compass on such difficult issues, including thinking, a stub for over two years in wikipedia... you can see now why.
Apogr 05:52, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Introduction to meaning: two subjects:
recursion and fractals - without them it amy be futile to see the woods behind the trees....
Apogr 06:34, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
But it may also be very enlightening to read parsing, the analysis of the syntax of formal language, together with BNF, thyt I could use to illustrate my point, provided taht it were bnot too technical to lay (non computer)people.
This is what you get n the internet for meaning: The encyclopedic bit must look familiar :-)
noun: the idea that is intended (Example: "What is the meaning of this proverb?") noun: the message that is intended or expressed or signified (Example: "What is the meaning of this sentence") See mean
Encyclopedia article
Meaning, studied in philosophy of language and linguistics, as well as being central to the fields of literary theory and critical theory and the philosophical field of epistemology, is a difficult concept to pin down. (continued at Wikipedia)
1. I have read a whole book on meanning by the most famous Hungarian linguist on the subject and there is no single definition of meaning at all. At one junction he goes as far as saying that "meaning is a relation". In our univeristies it is taught that meaning is the set of rules of using a symbol.
You should appreciate that I am trying to fill up a gap here and I am not likely to come up with references, partly, because I am certain that meaning is a function of recursion, a claim that may cost "my life", because it is like saying "the king is nude". Also, meaning can be beautifully illustrated by bringing up the subject of fractals, that explains that yu have various distances from the entity you want to define the meaning of, but in between two established scales, your focus is blurred, and you cannot grasp anything verbal, nor pictoral for that mater. Thinking seems to be pictorally driven, and transfer to a verbal plane is a problem of changing bandwidth.
Here are my issues with the new new intro, most of which I'd like to see incorporated into the existing intro:
- Seth Mahoney 02:06, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)