A law of meaning
This article rejects the canonical ideal of a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and marker and proposes a set-theoretical and optimality-based law for the relationship between meaning and its markers which allows for distinguishing true markers (such as not, no, never for negation) from othe...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Bologna
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads |
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| Online Access: | https://typologyatcrossroads.unibo.it/article/view/18920 |
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| _version_ | 1832576139637293056 |
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| author | Bernhard Wälchli Anna Sjöberg |
| author_facet | Bernhard Wälchli Anna Sjöberg |
| author_sort | Bernhard Wälchli |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This article rejects the canonical ideal of a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and marker and proposes a set-theoretical and optimality-based law for the relationship between meaning and its markers which allows for distinguishing true markers (such as not, no, never for negation) from otherwise associated items (such as negative polarity items as but, any): a meaning is expressed by the set of non-randomly recurrent markers that together are the best collocation of that meaning. We implement the law in an algorithm using Dunning’s log-likelihood and illustrate it by extracting markers for ‘know’, negation, first person subject and complementizers from translations of the New Testament in a variety sample of 83 languages with manual evaluation of all extracted markers. Markers are extracted from unannotated texts (with lexemes being just a special case of marker-set coalition phenomena) considering just one meaning at a time (without any need for accounting for specific coexpression types). |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8c8a2c8ced8e4905b597d28acf1fe66b |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2785-0943 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | University of Bologna |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads |
| spelling | doaj-art-8c8a2c8ced8e4905b597d28acf1fe66b2025-01-31T10:34:03ZengUniversity of BolognaLinguistic Typology at the Crossroads2785-09432025-01-014217110.6092/issn.2785-0943/1892017282A law of meaningBernhard Wälchli0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0256-6855Anna Sjöberg1https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4344-196XStockholm University, Department of linguisticsStockholm University, Department of linguisticsThis article rejects the canonical ideal of a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and marker and proposes a set-theoretical and optimality-based law for the relationship between meaning and its markers which allows for distinguishing true markers (such as not, no, never for negation) from otherwise associated items (such as negative polarity items as but, any): a meaning is expressed by the set of non-randomly recurrent markers that together are the best collocation of that meaning. We implement the law in an algorithm using Dunning’s log-likelihood and illustrate it by extracting markers for ‘know’, negation, first person subject and complementizers from translations of the New Testament in a variety sample of 83 languages with manual evaluation of all extracted markers. Markers are extracted from unannotated texts (with lexemes being just a special case of marker-set coalition phenomena) considering just one meaning at a time (without any need for accounting for specific coexpression types).https://typologyatcrossroads.unibo.it/article/view/18920semanticsparallel textscollocationoptimalitynegationpersonal pronounscomplementizersknowledge predication |
| spellingShingle | Bernhard Wälchli Anna Sjöberg A law of meaning Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads semantics parallel texts collocation optimality negation personal pronouns complementizers knowledge predication |
| title | A law of meaning |
| title_full | A law of meaning |
| title_fullStr | A law of meaning |
| title_full_unstemmed | A law of meaning |
| title_short | A law of meaning |
| title_sort | law of meaning |
| topic | semantics parallel texts collocation optimality negation personal pronouns complementizers knowledge predication |
| url | https://typologyatcrossroads.unibo.it/article/view/18920 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bernhardwalchli alawofmeaning AT annasjoberg alawofmeaning AT bernhardwalchli lawofmeaning AT annasjoberg lawofmeaning |