Emergent Semantics

Semantic Web Interest Group,
Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Representation Community Group,

Greetings. I would like to broach, for discussion, emergence and emergent semantics.

We can envision data structures, e.g. trees and graphs, which contain recursive substructures, e.g. subtrees and subgraphs, such that each substructure can be adorned with semantic content. We can refer to this content which adorns structures and substructures as emergent semantics.

An example scenario is that of natural language where sentences are comprised of lexemes and where sentences are thought to have more semantic content than the sum of the semantic content of the lexemes. Another example is that of narratives, comprised of events, where narratives are thought to have more semantic content than the sum of the semantic content of the events which comprise a fabula.

In the example of natural language, we can envision lexeme data structures as being adorned with semantics (collections of triples, quads or predicate calculus expressions) which indicate the meanings of the lexemes. We can envision phrases, containing and comprised of the lexemes, as being adorned with semantic content. We can envision sentences, containing phrases and lexemes, as being similarly adorned. Paragraphs, comprised of sentences, may, too, be adorned with emergent semantics—and so on.

In the example of narratives, we can envision event data structures as being adorned with semantics which indicate the events’ meanings/contents. We can envision graphs of interrelated events as being adorned with emergent semantic content. We can envision graphs containing subgraphs of interrelated events – each structure and substructure adorned with emergent semantics.

Is there any interest here in emergent semantics? Could anybody recommend any hyperlinks or publications?


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski