Information Technology Reference
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the paradigm, and the signifier, sign, and signified are valuable for under-
standing and analyzing signification in written language. Further devel-
oped here, Saussure's distinctions yield an understanding of the effects of
automatic indexing operations for full-text retrieval on the language of
discourse, where words are characteristically wrenched from their syn-
tagmas, effectively released into a paradigm (a network of associations)—
where they can acquire a multiplicity of signifieds—and restored to a
variety of syntagmas in retrieval.
Within information science, information retrieval research has given
some attention to linguistics, but it has focused more on its mathematical
and formalized aspects (represented by Zipf's work on the distribution
of word forms in linguistic corpora and by its interest in syntactic struc-
tures and computational transformations which has some analogies to
Chomsky's linguistics) (Zipf 1936; Montgomery 1972; Sparck Jones and
Kay 1973). The resistance of Saussurean linguistics to mathematical or
logical formalism (Harris 1987, xiv) may account for its limited adoption
within information retrieval research. Recent data obtained from citation
searching also indicate that Chomsky is more prominent than Saussure in
English-language scholarship, with very limited intersection between cita-
tions to Saussure and to Chomsky (see table 6.1).
The primary motivation for information science's recourse to linguis-
tics has been its search for effective transformational procedures on writ-
ten language to aid automatic indexing and translation. Here, we aim to
develop understandings that will assist direct human intervention; those
understandings also may indicate the possibilities and limitations of for-
malization.
Table 6.1
Intersection of interests in Saussure and Chomsky
Citation made in 2004 in the
Social Science Citation
Index
and in the
Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Saussure (all works)
64
Chomsky (linguistics not politics)
500
Saussure and Chomsky
6
