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How is meaning grounded in dictionary definitions?

How is meaning grounded in dictionary definitions?
How is meaning grounded in dictionary definitions?
Meaning cannot be based on dictionary definitions all the way down: at some point the circularity of definitions must be broken in some way, by grounding the meanings of certain words in sensorimotor categories learned from experience or shaped by evolution. This is the “symbol grounding problem”. We introduce the concept of a reachable set — a larger vocabulary whose meanings can be learned from a smaller vocabulary through definition alone, as long as the meanings of the smaller vocabulary are themselves already grounded. We provide simple algorithms to compute reachable sets for any given dictionary.
978-1-905593-57-6
17-24
Blondin-Massé, Alexandre
7012e337-6eeb-465d-bc4f-65fed04305fa
Chicoisne, Guillaume
860ea92c-e23e-4aae-bab2-72d8c06eef11
Gargouri, Yassine
303854c8-2efd-4002-b775-92682b4ffdb2
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Picard, Olivier
886e0932-a271-46bf-9a6a-8d9df7b4abd9
Marcotte, Odile
44506541-4f8e-44e4-9a91-742596892658
Blondin-Massé, Alexandre
7012e337-6eeb-465d-bc4f-65fed04305fa
Chicoisne, Guillaume
860ea92c-e23e-4aae-bab2-72d8c06eef11
Gargouri, Yassine
303854c8-2efd-4002-b775-92682b4ffdb2
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Picard, Olivier
886e0932-a271-46bf-9a6a-8d9df7b4abd9
Marcotte, Odile
44506541-4f8e-44e4-9a91-742596892658

Blondin-Massé, Alexandre, Chicoisne, Guillaume, Gargouri, Yassine, Harnad, Stevan, Picard, Olivier and Marcotte, Odile (2008) How is meaning grounded in dictionary definitions? Coling 2008. 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics: TextGraphs-3 Proceedings of the 3rd Textgraphs Workshop on Graph-Based Algorithms for Natural Language Processing, Manchester, United Kingdom. 16 - 24 Aug 2008. pp. 17-24 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Meaning cannot be based on dictionary definitions all the way down: at some point the circularity of definitions must be broken in some way, by grounding the meanings of certain words in sensorimotor categories learned from experience or shaped by evolution. This is the “symbol grounding problem”. We introduce the concept of a reachable set — a larger vocabulary whose meanings can be learned from a smaller vocabulary through definition alone, as long as the meanings of the smaller vocabulary are themselves already grounded. We provide simple algorithms to compute reachable sets for any given dictionary.

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Published date: August 2008
Venue - Dates: Coling 2008. 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics: TextGraphs-3 Proceedings of the 3rd Textgraphs Workshop on Graph-Based Algorithms for Natural Language Processing, Manchester, United Kingdom, 2008-08-16 - 2008-08-24
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 343606
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/343606
ISBN: 978-1-905593-57-6
PURE UUID: 2a1cfdf2-0c53-4754-a4a8-74d45b02b103
ORCID for Stevan Harnad: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6153-1129

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Date deposited: 05 Oct 2012 16:58
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:48

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Contributors

Author: Alexandre Blondin-Massé
Author: Guillaume Chicoisne
Author: Yassine Gargouri
Author: Stevan Harnad ORCID iD
Author: Olivier Picard
Author: Odile Marcotte

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