Semantic Matter and Its States: Words, Meaning, and Modeling
Sabine Ploux · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2024
Three key points are addressed in the book : (1) the necessity, in modeling word meaning, of starting from another level than that of linguistic units. This level — of which I describe the linguistic and neurolinguistic requirements and contingencies — will be called semantic matter ; (2) the proposal that semantic matter is the result of establishing a linkage between systems of forms of expression (derived from writing or speech) and systems that are heterogeneous to those forms ; (3) the proposal that semantic matter acquires its function in sentences by way of different states, the main examples of which are studied here. The first part of the book present and support an argumentation that goes back to structural linguistics in order to show that the notion of sign and the duality between expression form and content form is echoed both in search for a model in lexical semantics and in experimental in neurosemantic data. The distinction between paradigmatic axis and syntagmatic axis, another duality widely developed in this research trend, will also serve as a benchmark for questioning the relevance of current computational approaches grounded solely upon usage. The second part is devoted to the link between the units of the language and the units of the model. The notions of semantic matter and the state of semantic matter are presented. The idea of semantic matter/substance draws support from a critique of the use of atomism in language modeling and from another critique regarding the use of the homogeneous, frozen approach in its totality (as in the use of vector spaces as a formal framework) in lexical semantics. The qualities and characteristics of this infralinguistic level will be presented in order to examine them in the light of suitable models. The third part propose a new way of modeling in lexical semantics. It is rooted in the notion of a quasifractal tre-like structure. I show how this framework satisfies all of the requirements previously brought to the fore and how it can be used not only to represent paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic agreement, and their mutual interactions. I stress the dual nature of semantic matter, which, for each lexie necessarily contains an explicit part, the form of the content (what is said), and in the shade, an implicit and inhibited part that refers to its opposite, contrary, or negation. Semantic matter is modeled by a set of transformations corresponding to the nature and syntactic function of the lexie in the sentence. I show how the formal structure, i.e., the three structure, can act as "matter" to the basic states associated to their nature and function in the sentence. The case of the parts of speech — verb, noun, adjective, and adverb — are presented, along with the differences between the subject and direct object functions.