The Glossary of terms of ASMIC

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ENGLISH	EXPOSITORY TEXT
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.
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).
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”.
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*.
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” (corresponds to the 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].
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).
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.
Combination	Higher level operation on two selected chunks of information between which a relationship can be established.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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. Motivation 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 O_i (Old) or N_i(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 O_s (Old) or N_s (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.
New	*See* *Meta-informative status.
Object	That segment of a basic utterance which represents its Local (secondary) meta-informative Center of Attention (CA).
Old	*See* *Meta-informative status.
Participant	An entity playing a role in a situation. Semantic role filler.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Situation	Situation Frames are defined regardless of their participants. The three fundamental components of situations are: (1) Frame (their instances are relations), (2) Role (their instances are Participant) and (3) Anchors (their instances are spatio-temporal Suppports).
Status	*See* Meta-informative *Status.
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.
Text or Discourse	A set/bug/family of sequentially ordered utterances which can be characterized by one or more common *Centres of Attention (CA).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).

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