Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ciations. The minimal units isolated in description can be combined in
searching (for instance, as direct Boolean combinations or as phrase- or
sequence-searching, itself understandable as an application of the Boolean
AND). Retrieval (the instantiation of the search statement) reinserts
detached units into the syntagma, a reverse transformation of a paradigm
into a multitude of syntagmatic occurrences. The signified, implied by the
fuller syntagma revealed by this reversal, may not correspond to the signi-
fied intended by the search statement. An incomplete mental representa-
tion of the networks of associations for search terms may have been held,
possibly due to the tendency to receive words from language as terms
from a nomenclature.
In summary of the process of description, units of expression are cut
from their fuller syntagma or sequence, where they may have had a definite
signified, and released into a paradigm, where they become multivalent
and admit a number of signifieds. In searching, a mental representation of
the intended signified for the signifier, possibly received as having a single
meaning (or as a
univocal
complex of signifier and signified), may be held.
Retrieval restores the syntagmatic occurrences of search terms, where the
signifieds represented by a single signifier may begin to constitute and even
exhaust the variety contained within the particular paradigm. Therefore,
linguistics can contribute a sophisticated understanding of the interaction
between signifier and signified, enforced by the movement from syntagma
to paradigm in description and from paradigm to syntagma in searching
and retrieval, for computational and direct human operations on written
language in full-text representation and retrieval.
4
A Syntactics for Retrieval from Full Text
The message and the messages for selection are as fundamental to infor-
mation theory as the syntagma and paradigm are to Saussurean linguistics.
If the analogy of the message with the syntagma—and of the messages for
selection with the paradigm—is accepted, information theory can be used
to develop a theoretical understanding of the relative number of records
or documents retrieved by different forms of searching, particularly the
contrast between searching using word and multiword sequences. A more
sophisticated formal understanding of the word, corresponding to its
practical implementation, was derived from information theory.
