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control. However, studies in Artificial Intelligence have convincingly demonstrated that there are certain standard frames, scripts, or goals that can be recorded as a part of the average competence of a social group. In this sense these frames can be recorded by an ideal encyclopedia and are actually recorded as a part of the semantic competence of an intelligent machine. (See Petöfi 1976a; Schank 1975 and 1979; Schank and Abelson 1977; Minsky 1974; and others.) |
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Another attempt to record part of the background knowledge as a part of the semantic competence is the notion of "stereotype" in Putman 1975 and, in a more refined, complete, and ambitious way, in the work of Petöfi in general as well as in Neubauer and Petöfi 1980. |
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All the studies I have briefly and tentatively listed are in some way inserting pragmatics into the framework of an encyclopedia-oriented semantics. It goes without saying that at this point it would simply be silly to state whether semantics is "devouring" pragmatics, or vice versa. It would be a mere nominalistic question, relevant at most for academic struggles and grant hunting. I would simply say that we are facing a new, unified semiotic approach to the dialectics between signification and communication. |
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3. Names, Things, and Actions: A New Version of an Old Myth |
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The artificial separation of the three provinces of semiotics is due, I think, to the ghost of the Adamic Myth such as it has been told for a long time. If every science is dominated by an influential metaphysics, perverse semantics has been and still is dominated by a simplified mythological report on the origins of language. |
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According to this myth, Adam (or in the Greek version, the original nomothètes, or "name maker") was looking at things and giving them a name. The comic situation of the first man sitting under a tree, pointing a finger toward a flower or an animal, and stating this will be Daisy, this will be Crocodile became dramatic when the first philosophers of language had to decide whether these names were given according to a convention or to the nature of things. To choose Nomos against Physis meant to disregard all the cases of onomatopoeia, not to speak of syntactic iconism. To choose Physis against Nomos meant to disregard all the cases of blatant arbitrariness, that is, the majority of linguistic terms. |
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As this paper has suggested, a liberal semantics analyzes expressions by atomic primitives only as extrema ratio and as a shorthand device for the sake of economy. Such definitions as "tiger = carnivorous mammals or big striped yellow cat" are taken seriously only in an academic mi- |
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