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ENGLISH |
EXPOSITORY
TEXT |
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Aboutness |
Two kinds
of aboutness should be distinguished. Spoken-aboutness (Resemblance) concerns
the selection of *Centre(s) of Attention (CA) and Speak-aboutness
(Contiguity) concerns the combination of the selected *Centre of Attention
(CA) with what is predicated about it. |
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Anchor, anchoring |
Spatio-temporal
component of semantic situations. One of their three fundamental constitutive
components (the two others being frames and roles). Anchoring is used to indicate the dynamic aspect of such
spatio-temporally situated relationships (in which one term at least is a
location). |
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Associative Semantics (AS) |
The Associative Semantics (AS) theory is an ontology-based semantic theory of information as expressed by natural language utterances with clear-cut distinctions between (a) the universal (or at least common) ontology and (b) the semantics of natural languages. In this theory, roles and anchors are seen
as basic infons (unary relations). Roles are defined ontologically as active
and passive unary relations of associated semantic situations. The
associative combination of their realizations gives rise through derivation
to median roles such as “instruments” or “means”. |
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Background |
That
“speak about” (predicate) part of an extended utterance which has an *Old
meta-informative *Status. Importantly, the *Status of the “spoken about”
(corresponding to the Centre of Attention of that utterance) part of the same
utterance is opposite (New) to it. In other words, background is the *Old part of an extended utterance contrasting
with the *New Centre of Attention (*Focus). Antonym: Comment. |
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Centre of Attention (CA) |
Attention
is that salient chunk of knowledge to which human agents are attuned by
periods of time. Whenever a speaker decides to communicate, usually he
partitions his representation space into its Centre and Periphery. No
judgment may be built without selecting at least one Centre of Attention
(CA). See ‘spoken-aboutness’ under *Aboutness. A segment of an
expression is considered as “centered” (is a Centre of Attention) if it
represents an entity or a whole situation which has been selected (See
*Selection) among other entities or situations respectively. Such segment often contains
meta-informative markers (syntactic, morphological, prosodic or any pragmatic
marker). Different formal notations of Centres of Attention may be chosen. In
the MIC theory, they are introduced as “aboutness”-style functors (reserved
relators belonging to the set of *Infons). If an
utterance contains more than one Centre of Attention (CA), one of them is global (main) and the other(s) are local (secondary). Caution: The
utterance “John and Mary dance.” is
interpreted as containing one single Centre of Attention (with no distinction
between global and local) in contrast to the semantic
information where “John” and “Mary” are analyzed as belonging to
two concurrent (joint) situations: [John dances] & [Mary dances]. |
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Centre of Attention (CA) /Global/ |
Main
meta-informative *Centre of Attention (CA) of a basic utterance (*Subject) or
of an *Extended Utterance (*Topic) as well as that of a Text/Discourse
(General *Theme). |
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Centre of Attention (CA) /Local/ |
Secondary
(dependent) meta-informative centre of attention (CA). It is the *Object in a
basic utterance, the *Focus in an extended utteranceand and the *Particular
Theme in a Text/Discourse. |
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Combination |
Higher
level operation on two selected chunks of information between which a
relationship can be established. |
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Comment |
That
“speak about” (predicate) part of an extended utterance which has a *New
meta-informative *Status. Importantly, the *Status of the “spoken about” part
(corresponding to the Centre of Attention of the utterance,
(see *Topic) of the same utterance is opposite (*Old) to it. In other
words, comment is the *New part of
an extended utterance contrasting with the *Old Centre of Attention (*Topic).
Antonym: *Background. |
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Default Role Mapping |
The
principle concerning the *Centre of Attention (CA) and *Agent/*Figure
relationships. According to this principle, in the Accusative languages,
there is a default relation linking the *Subject with the *Active Role of an
Agent or Figure while in the Ergative languages, the default role mapping
links the *Subject with the Passive Role of an Agent or Figure. |
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Entity : Agent |
An animate
entity seen fit to play active roles in semantic situations as expressed by
utterances. In the Associative Semantics (AS) theory, it is possible for an
animate entity to play more than one active role. Moreover, agents can also
play non active roles (passive or median). |
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Entity : Figure |
Inanimate
entity. This kind of entities can play as well active as passive roles.
Active roles played by Figures are said to be *Quasi-active (*Q-Role). |
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Focus |
That
Global Centre of Attention (the “spoken-about”) of an utterance the
meta-informative *Status of which is *New while its “speak-about” part has an
opposite (contrary) *Status (Old). Antonym:
*Topic. |
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Frame /Situation/ |
Space of
states and actions. There are four kinds (one static and three dynamic) of
frames: States - that semantic situation frame which is
delimited by +Space only, Event - that semantic situation which is delimited
by +Space and determined by +Time. N.B.: Events have no middle stage (‘RUN’).
Example: “to cough” as in “John just coughed”, Ordinary Process - that semantic situation which is delimited
by +Space and determined by +Time and +Progression), Refined Process
- that semantic situation which is delimited by +Space and determined by
+Time, +Progression and +Granularity). |
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Information |
In the MIC
theory, information is defined as a (spatio-temporally)situated semantic
relationship between agents and/or figures. Kernel information contains only
the situation frame, its roles (participants) and anchors (spatio-temporal
locations). It can (but must not) be assigned a propositional value
(True/False). |
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Level of interpretation |
The three
following levels of interpretation are distinguished: shallow, standard and deep. When the
*Subject of a default (active for Acccusative languages or passive for
Ergative languages) diathesis sentence does not correspond to the default
(active or passive respectively) semantic role of a given situation, the
shallow level of interpretation is introduced. |
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Meta-information |
Information
about another information. Indeed, the semantic content of the utterance
should be seen as the information itself, and the different forms that may be
chosen to model this information should be properly considered as a meta-information. Meta-information
concerns therefore the way information is presented: in order to achieve the
ordering of non-linear expressions as texts (sequences of linguistic
utterances), the speaker must select a *Centre of Attention (CA) and
*predicate about it. |
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Meta-Informative Centering theory (MIC theory) |
Linguistic
theory which explains the problems (known in classical linguistics as
belonging to the “Information Structure” (IS)) with respect to those which
are known as belonging to the Predicate Argument Structure (PAS). Together
with the Associative Semantic Theory (AS), the MIC theory constitutes a
coherent framework (ASMIC or AS&MIC) which is suited for analyzing the
centering problems of meta-information (Centres of Attention) in utterances. |
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Meta-informative status |
In the MIC
theory no semantic content can be used in communication (either encoded or
decoded) without its meta-informative status
(i.e.-e.: without pragmatic centering of information). The meta-informative
status may take one of two values: *Old or *New. See also *Validation. |
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Motitvation of Status |
Motitvation
is the reason why the *Status of an utterance is either *Old or *New. We say
that: Old or New statuses rely upon information when the meta-informative Oi
(Old) or Ni (New) statuses of an utterance (either its whole or a
part of it) are motivated by
cognition or by information. Old or New statuses rely upon discourse when the meta-informative Os
(Old) or Ns (New) statuses of an utterance (either its whole or a
part of it) are motivated by the
fact that it is placed in a text/discourse. |
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New |
See *Meta-informative status. |
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Object |
That
segment of a basic utterance which represents its *Local (secondary)
meta-informative *Center of Attention (CA). |
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Old |
See *Meta-informative status. |
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Participant |
An entity
playing a role in a situation. Semantic role filler. |
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Predicate |
That part
of utterance which says (predicates) something about the *Global (main)
*Centre of Attention as expressed, suggested or otherwise pointed at in a
text/discourse or in a speech act. In Elementary Logic, predicate is defined
formally as a formula containing a relation literal (name) and one or more
argument(s) (place(s)). Hence in logic, predicate is nothing but form; it has
no meaning. Therefore, both is_running(agent: “Peter”) and is_running(subject: “Peter”) are well-formed predicate formulae. On the
contrary, in the MIC theory, predicate is not defined formally. Instead,
predicate is seen as the result of *Speak-aboutness, hence it belongs to the
meta-informative (pragmatic) level but not to the informative (semantic)
level. |
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Predication |
Speech act
aiming at pointing at the central part of communicated information (See
*Centre of Attention) in order to predicate something about it (see *Speak-aboutness and
*Spoken-aboutness). |
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Q-Role Quasi-active Role Q-active Role |
Agents typically fit the dynamic
situations (Actions) whereas figures fit static situations (States). When it
is not so, shallow level i.e.:
partially specified semantic level is introduced. There is an important feature of situation
participants which characterizes the shallow level: in active roles, the
inanimate entities (figures as opposed to agents) are semantically
interpreted as if they were animate. Such figures are said to play
quasi-active roles (Q-active roles or abbreviated to Q-roles). In the cases of agentivation or figuration, for example,
"Q-initiator" will be said to designate the figure in an active
role (which normally fits agents) and "Q-source" will be said to
designate the agent in an active role (which normally fits figures).
See also *Role. |
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Role |
One of the
three fundamental constitutive components of semantic *situations. Two elementary (Active and Passive) and
one derived (Median) roles are
distinguished and defined as unary relations of associated semantic
situations. Important ! Due to the definition of semantic situations as
associations, one participant (role filler) may play more than one role in
the given semantic situation. See also *Role and Voice. |
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Roles and Voice |
In
Accusative languages, by default, in the active voice utterances the *Subject
(meta-information) corresponds to the *Active Role or to the *Q-Active Role
(information) while in the passive voice utterances, the *Subject corresponds
to the roles which are other than the *Active Role or the *Q-Active Role. |
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Selection |
Lower
level operation on that chunk of information which is pointed at (is
analysed) on the lower constitutive level of pattern recognition or pattern
production. |
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Situation |
Situations
are defined regardless of their participants. Their three fundamental
components are: Frame
(their instances are relations), Role (their instances are Participant) and
Anchors (their instances are spatio-temporal Suppports). |
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Status |
See Meta-informative *Status. |
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Subject |
Main
meta-informative “spoken-about” part of an utterance (*Center of Attention
(CA)) of a *Basic utterance. The meta-informative *Status of the whole basic
utterance may be either *New or Old. |
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Text or Discourse |
A
set/bug/family of sequentially ordered utterances which can be characterized
by one or more common *Centres of Attention (CA). |
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Theme |
Global or
local *Centre of Attention of a text/discourse. The Global *Centre of
Attention of a text/discourse is opposed to its Local *Centre(s) of Attention
by the scope(s) of the given text/discourse or parts of it. |
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Topic |
The Global
Centre of Attention (the “spoken-about”) of an utterance the meta-informative
*Status of which is *Old while its “speak-about” (comment) part has an
opposite (contrary) *Status (New). Antonym:
Focus. |
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Utterance |
An
utterance is a proposition uttered in a context and obligatorily validated as
*Old or *New information. When used in an utterance, the objective
(denotative) Oldness or Newness of an information motivates (see
*Motivation) the meta-level segmentation of communicated informations giving
rise to the creation of pragmatic (connotative) contents. For this reason, an
utterance can be assigned either *Old or *New meta-informative *Status
regardless of its semantically assigned truth values. |
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Utterance / Extended/ |
That
utterance which is divided into two parts having contrasting meta-informative
*Statuses. There are two kinds of such extended utterances: with a
Topic-Comment relationship – where one part of the utterance has an *Old
meta-informative *Status (called *Topic) and the other one with a *New
meta-informative *Status (called *Comment), with a
Focus-Background relationship - where one part of the utterance has an *New
meta-informative *Status (called *Focus) and the other one with an *Old
meta-informative *Status (called *Background). |
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Utterance /Basic/ |
The basic
utterance is not divided into parts (segments) which would be contrary
(opposed to) with respect to the *New or *Old meta-informative *Statuses.
I.e.: the *Status of a basic utterance cannot be but either entirely *New or
entirely *Old. |
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Validation |
The
meanings (semantic information) of utterances can be validated as True or
False while their meta-informative *Statuses as *Old or *New. Avoid also
confusing the “semantic motivation validity” (information may be Known or
Unknown) withe the “utterance validity” (meta-information maybe *Old or
*New). |