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IEML

The Problem of Coding Linguistic Meaning

  • "To understand the phrase « I choose the vegetarian menu », one must of course recognize that the verb is « to choose », the subject « I » and the object « the vegetarian menu » and know moreover that « vegetarian » qualifies « menu ». But one must also know the meaning of words and know, for example, that vegetarian differs from meaty, flexitarian and vegan, which implies going beyond the sentence to situate its components in systems of taxonomy and semantic oppositions, those of language as well as those of various practical fields."
  • "each sentence in IEML is located at the intersection of a syntagmatic tree and paradigmatic matrices. In addition to a regular grammar, IEML relies on a dictionary of about 3000 words – without synonyms or homonyms – organized in a little more than a hundred paradigms."

The complexity of semantics

When a sentence is pronounced, it makes sense on at least three levels (grammar, dialectics and rhetoric).

  • Conceptualization: the mental representation prompted by its grammatical structure and the meaning of its words (a speech evoques a network of concepts)
  • Veridiction: the logical plane of its reference to a state of things (a speech is true or false)
  • Interaction: the practical plane of social interaction (a speech is a move in a language game).

Pragmatic Semantics

  • the enunciation of a sentence is an act.

Referential semantics, or truthfulness

  • for an utterance to be capable of such a pragmatic meaning, it must also be capable of describing a reality, be it exact or inexact, serious or fictitious.
  • Like states of consciousness, propositions are intentional, that is: they point to a reference.
  • Referential semantics is more a matter of the exact sciences and logic and stands out against the background of an objective reality. Here, linguistic expressions describe and index the world of interlocutors and allow logical reasoning.

Linguistic semantics, or conceptualization

  • Just as pragmatic semantics has referential semantics as its condition of possibility, referential semantics in turn can only manifest itself on the basis of linguistic semantics.
  • The linguistic meaning of an expression comes from the words it is composed of and the meaning assigned to them in a dictionary.
  • It also comes from the grammatical roles that these words play in the sentence.
  • In sum, linguistic meaning emerges from the inter-definitional, suitability, similarity, and difference relations between words in the dictionary and the grammatical relations between words in the sentence.
  • IEML has been designed to solve the problem of coding the linguistic or conceptual meaning

Saussure’s Legacy and Structuralism

  • the signifieds are not self-sufficient atoms of meaning but correspond to positions in systems of differences: paradigms
  • Hjemslev renamed the opposition between signifier and signified by describing two linguistic « planes »: that of expression (the signifier) and that of content (the signified). Each of the two planes is in turn analyzed in terms of matter and form. The matter of expression is in the range of sensible phenomena, for example visual images or sounds. In contrast, the forms of expression denote the abstract units that result from the distribution of signifiers in a given language.

Tesnière’s Legacy and Cognitive Linguistics

  • The linguistic architecture of mental models is obviously not exclusive of sensory-motor modes of representation, especially visual ones, which can relate to fictional worlds as well as to lived reality.
  • Since one of IEML’s missions is to serve as a formal modeling tool, it must not only organize a morphism between its semantics and its syntax, but also systematize and facilitate as much as possible the representation of processes, actors, circumstances and their interactions.
  • example of the actant model : « The verbal node (…) expresses a whole little drama. Like a drama it involves (…) a process and, most often, actors and circumstances. The verb expresses the process. (…) Actors are beings or things (…) participating in the process. (…) Adjuncts express the circumstances like time, place, manner, etc. »
  • IEML integrates the main lexical functions highlighted by Melchuk, making it easy to compose new words from dictionary elements and to formally explain the semantic relationships between lexical units.
  • IEML provides its speakers with the grammatical tools needed to describe scenes and tell stories.
    • In addition, IEML enables the modeling of a specialized knowledge domain or a particular semantic field through the free elaboration of terminologies (radical paradigms) and frame sentences (sentence paradigms).

Austin, Wittgenstein and the Pragmatic Legacy

  • Language is an abstract structure that combines paradigms of words (indecomposable atoms of meaning) and rules for the composition of grammatical units (recursive sentences) from words.
  • In contrast, speech – or text – is a particular sequence of morphemes that actualizes the language system in space and time.
  • IEML terminologies and framework sentences belong to an intermediate category between language and speech.
  • Without a model of the world, action is meaningless and without immersion in some practical situation, representation loses all relevance.
  • Linguistic pragmatics refers to acts performed inside the language sphere but which have extra-linguistic consequences, such as baptizing, prohibiting, condemning, etc.
    • Since they are performed in the language, these acts demonstrate a symbolic nature.
    • They are governed by rules and carried out by « players » who assume certain roles.
  • A multitude of « language games », to use Wittgenstein’s expression, animate the pragmatic dimension opened up by the enunciation.
  • A language can itself be likened to a system of rules or a game.
    • if a language L is philological, it is capable of defining a multitude of restricted languages (l1, l2, l3…), rule systems or games, all of which are distinct ways of using language L in practice.
    • Since IEML is a philological language, we will use it not only to model any semantic field, represent scenes and tell stories, but also to explain language games whose rules, roles and moves we will formalize through terminologies and sentences paradigms.
    • When they recognize the speech acts performed by IEML speakers, algorithms will be able to automatically trigger their extra-linguistic consequences, and to compute the new states of the current « matches »
    • four main types of speech acts that are particularly relevant for IEML:
      • reference
      • reasoning,
      • social communication
      • instructions given to machines
  • The first function of enunciation is to refer to non-linguistic objects. One of its most obvious forms is the distribution of interlocutory roles: the first, second or third person indicates who is speaking, to whom and about what.
  • a simple text does not allow us to interpret Deictics such as « I », « this » or « tomorrow ». Only the event of an utterance by someone, in a defined spatio-temporal context of interlocution, can give them content.
  • This referential function of language is particularly important for IEML, which is designed to categorize datasets and therefore to index (or label) them. Both the distribution of interlocutory roles and the categorization of data can conform to many distinct reference games.
  • the operation of reference is a speech act, this act is part of a multitude of possible games, and these games can be made explicit in IEML.

An Image of the World or an Image of Oneself?

  • goal: a language of clarity, as unambiguous and translatable as possible
  • As for IEML’s relationship with extralinguistic reality, it is the result of a multitude of language games that encompasses the various ways of mapping out, recognizing and referring to relevant objects according to practical contexts
  • Our metalanguage clarifies the relations between signifieds and signifiers as well as the relations between signifieds to the point of being able to automate their processing. IEML’s main contribution is therefore at the level of linguistic semantics.
  • As for reference semantics – pointing to extra-linguistic realities – it can become more precise insofar as the different reference modalities are specified in IEML
  • Finally, the illocutionary force of enunciations, i.e. the « moves » that are played in a multitude of communication games, can be recognized by algorithms and processed accordingly, provided that the games in question have been previously described in IEML.
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