Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. Semantics is studied in linguistics, philosophy, psychology and sociology. It is also studied in computer science, artificial intelligence and in Library and Information Science (LIS).

Semantics is concerned with the meaning of words, expressions, signs, sentences, texts. There is also literature about the semantics of pictures and the semantic relations between citing documents (cf.,  Harter et al., 1993).

Peregrin (2004) suggests that the two main paradigms in semantics are the one developed by logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap (and the young Wittgenstein) on the one hand and the one developed by pragmatic philosophers such as John Dewey (and related to, among others, the late Wittgenstein) on the other hand. The positivist semantics suggests that expressions 'stand for' entities and their meanings are the entities stood for by them. The pragmatic semantics suggests that expressions are tools for interaction and their meanings are their functions within the interaction, their aptitudes to serve it in their distinctive ways.

Database-semantics is a field still relatively unexplored. The Norwegian psychologists Ragnar Rommetveit mentions "Ronald Stamper, a database semanticist at the London School of Economics", who emphasizes that "Attempts at converting context-bound and concerned human knowledge into "neutral" computer language .. are futile. Stamper (1988:4) thus maintains: "Even the most precise definitions, the most mechanical set of rules cannot be arrived at without an often difficult social process of negotiating agreement and arriving at a common view" (Rommetveit, 1992, p. 40).

Hjørland (2007) explores different kinds of "warrant" in claiming that concepts are semantically related. Theories of semantics implicating different kinds of "warrant" are:  

a) Query/situation specific or idiosyncratic semantics

b) Universal, Platonic semantics

c) “Deep semantics” common to all languages (or inherent in cognitive structures)

d) Semantics specific to specific empirical languages (e.g. Swedish)

e) Domain or discourse specific semantics

f) Other (e.g. semantics determined by a company or by a workgroup, “user oriented” views)

According to Harris (2005) science - like art, religion and history - is one of the super categories adopted by modern societies for explaining and justifying certain types of human activity. Harris argues that each super category has its own semantics. The function of the super category is to integrate what would otherwise be unconnected forms of inquiry, and the result of such integrations is to draw a certain map of our intellectual world.

"Language is cultural and evolves within communities of discourse. Every little community evolves its own dialect through metaphor and negotiation. Collaboration between individuals from different communities necessarily involves some dissonance, both in terms of what words mean (denote) and what they imply (connote) and, therefore, what words will be effective and socially acceptable. These issues extend broadly across the classification, categorization, and naming practices which form an important part of the infrastructure of collaborative activities." (Buckland, 2006).
 

Svenonius (2000, p. 147ff) makes a distinction between referential semantics and relational semantics. "The referential semantics of a subject language deals with the generalized homonym  problem. It consists of methods for restricting term references so that any given term has one and only one meaning. The relational semantics of a subject language deals with the generalized synonym problem and consists of methods for linking terms with similar or related meanings. "

Literature:

Buckland, M. (2006). Bad Words and Strong Documents. Summary of presentation at COOP2006: 7th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, Marseilles, May 10, 2006. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~buckland/COOP2006.html

PowerPoint presentation http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~buckland/COOP2006.ppt

Folke Larsen, S. (1980). Egocentrisk tale, begrebsstruktur og semantisk udvikling. Nordisk Psykologi, 32(1), 55-73.

Harris, R. (2005). The semantics of science. London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
 

Harter, S. P.; Nisonger, T. E. & Weng, A. (1993). Semantic Relationships between Cited and Citing Articles in Library and Information Science Journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 44(9), 543-552.

Hedlund, T., Pirkola, A. & Kalervo, J. (2001). Aspects of Swedish morphology and semantics from the perspective of mono- and cross-language information retrieval. Information Processing and Management, 37, 147-161. Available at: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/nlp/clarity/papers/SWEIR-Hedlund-IPM01.pdf

Hirst, G. (1987). Semantics. IN: Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2, Ed. by S. C. Shapiro. New York: Wiley. Pp. 1024-1029.

Hjørland, B. (1994). Nine Principles of Knowledge Organization. Advances in Knowledge Organization, vol. 4, 91-100.

Hjørland, B. (1998). Information retrieval, text composition, and semantics. Knowledge Organization, 25(1/2), 16-31.http://www.db.dk/bh/publikationer/Filer/ir_semant_2.pdf

Hjørland, B. (2007). Semantics and Knowledge Organization. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, vol. 41, 367-405.

Leech, G. N. (1969). Semantics, introduction 499-503. IN: Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Information and Control. Editor in chief: A. R. Meetham. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
 

Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics 1-2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. reprinted 1991.

Peregrin, J. (2004). Pragmatism and semantics. (Manuscript in English), published in  German in: Fuhrmann, A. & Olsson E. J. (eds.): Pragmatisch denken, Ontos, Frankfurt a M., 89-108). http://jarda.peregrin.cz/mybibl/PDFTxt/482.pdf

Petras, V. (2006). Translating dialects in Search: Mapping between specialized languages of discourse and documentary languages. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
 

Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a Dialogically Based Social-Cognitive Approach to Human Cognition and Communication. Pp. 19-44 IN: The Dialogical Alternative. Towards a Theory of Language and Mind. Ed. by Astri Heen Wold. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
 

Sheth, A.; Ramakrishnan, C. & Thomas, C. (2005). Semantics for the Semantic Web: The Implicit, the Formal and the Powerful. The International Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems, 1(1), 1-18. http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/library/download/SRT05-IJ-SW-IS.pdf

Sinha, C. (1988). Language and Representation. A Socio-naturalistic Approach to Human Development. London: Harvester.
 

Spence, N. C. W.: Semantics, context and collocation 503-504; Spence, N. C. W.: Semantics, field theories 504-507; Spence, N. C. W.: Semantics, meaning and refererence 507-510;

Spence, N. C. W. (1969). Semantics, sign and symbol 510-512 IN: Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Information and Control. Editor in chief: A. R. Meetham. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
 

Stamper, R. (1984). Management epistemology: Garbage in, Garbage out. Paper presented at working conference on Knowledge Representation for Decision Support, Durham, july 1984.
 

Stamper, R. (1988). Pathologies of AI: Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in Professional Work. AI and Society, 2, 3-16.
 

Svenonius, Elaine (2000). The intellectual foundations of information organization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Vickery, B. C. & Vickery, A. (2004). Semantics and retrieval. IN: Vickery, B. & Vickery, A.: Information Science in Theory and Practice. 3rd edition. München: K. G. Saur. (Pp. 133-179).
 

Wotjak, G. (1990). Semantiktheorien. IN: Europäische Enzyklopädie zu Philosophie und Wissenschaften. Band 1-4. Herausgegeben von Hans Jörg Sandkühler u.a. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, pp. 263-270).
 

Sparck Jones, K. & Kay, M. (1973). Linguistics and Information Science. London: Academic Press. (Chapter 6: Semantics, pp. 120-173).

Tarnopolsky, Y. (2005). The chemistry of semantics. http://users.ids.net/~yuri/chemsem.pdf   (Retrieved 2007-02-28).

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2005). Lexical semantics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_semantics

See also: Colors; Information science, related fields; Semantic relations (Lifeboat for KO); Semiotic triangle
 

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 17-03-2008

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to be edited:

Indenfor *informationsvidenskab er semantiske problemer knyttet til databasesøgning, "subject access points" (herunder *referencer), *tesauri-relationer m.v. Et specielt felt - der viser semantikbegrebets omfang - vedrører semantikken mellem citerede og citerende dokumenter (jfr. Harter et al., 1993)

Indenfor AI har man især interesseret sig for fgl. semantiske teorier: "Decompositional Semantics", "Montague Semantics", "Situational Semantics", "Procedural Semantics" and  "Knowledge-base semantics". (See introduction to these theories in Hirst, 1987).

I udformningen af *"information retrieval languages" spiller semantiske kategorier en vigtig rolle, f.eks. begreber som genereriske relationer (overordnethed, under­ordnethed, sideordnethed), del-helhedsrelationer, synonymitet, quasisynonymitet, komplementaritet etc. Indenfor *emneanalyse og i moderne datamatiske analyser af sprog og i *videns­repræsentation indenfor *kunstig intelligens spiller begreber som aktion, agent, kondition, instrument, lokation, objekt, recipient, tid, sandheds­værdi en vigtig rolle, idet de udgør et forsøg på en "dybdegrammatisk" tilgang til meningen i sætninger.

Nogle semantiske relationer er givet med begrebernes definition. En "skoleelev" er således altid generisk underordnet "elev". Andre semantiske kategorier udvikler sig med den menneskelige viden og de menneskelige behov. På eet tidspunkt er x instrument for y, på et andet tidspunkt er z instrument for y. De semantiske relationer, der forandrer sig, er ikke de mindst væsentlige for ir-sprog. IR-sprog skal derfor afspejle de væsentlige semantiske relationer udfra det pågældende videns­domænes særlige erkendelsesniveau og -interesser. Hjørland (1994) kritiserer en tendens til i IS at søge efter "permanent inherent characteristics of knowledge", "deeper semantic structures" eller "more fundamental principles" etc. Semantiske relationer må ses i relation til fags erkendelse. Såfremt man kun opererer med eviggyldige semantiske relationer, opererer man i en form for platonisk, objektiv idealisme.