Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6
A Semantics for Retrieval from Full Text
Introduction
This chapter focuses primarily on semantics and draws specifically from
Saussurean linguistics to describe the production of meaning in written
language; it also provides a basis for understanding transformations of
meaning in full-text retrieval. Meaning in written language will be under-
stood as the product of human mental labor through interaction with the
syntagma (the linear sequence of utterance) and the paradigm (the net-
work of associations a word acquires outside its context in discourse).
Syntagma and paradigm are fundamental to Saussurean linguistics and
congruent with concepts from information theory: message and message
for selection. We will use the concepts from information theory in the
next chapter to account for the frequency of occurrence and recurrence
of units and combinations of units in written language, principally words
and multiword sequences. In addition, syntagma and paradigm are con-
gruent with the material basis for algorithmic operations on the line of
writing for description, searching, and retrieval. The congruence of fun-
damental categories implies that an account of the production of mean-
ing, derived from Saussurean linguistics, may be particularly revealing for
understanding full-text retrieval. While the account of the semantics of
written language presented here is consistent with Saussurean linguistics,
it must be extrapolated—not simply received.
Saussurean linguistics has influenced information science primarily
through its incorporation into semiotics, briefly anticipated by Saussure
(1916/1983, 15-17; Warner 1994, 9). Adopted by semioticians Saussure's
distinctions regarding the syntagma as conceived in binary contrast to
