Concept

Denotatum

SIGN

FIG.1

Why does this situation make the words and relations between them so ambiguous? The answer is straight-forward enough: because there is no direct link between an image of the real world and the form of a word, that is, others simply do not see what you mean.

Now, let us ask ourselves if the meaning of our speech is really that unclear. You would. You would, perhaps, say: “No. You understand me; I understand you; we understand others if we all speak one and the same language.”

So, on the one hand, words are ambiguous and there are a lot of examples (those recently discussed are convincing enough), but on the other, when speaking a language, you make other understand you and you understand others who speak this language. It looks like a contradiction, a paradox, but it is not, and to explain it let us look at some history. Among the hieroglyphs one can find, for example, an image of an eye (Fig. 2).

This eye image may be primitive but it is, indeed, an eye meaning “to see”. In this and some other hieroglyphs we do observe a similarity between the sign (hieroglyph) and a fragment of the real world (an eye).

FIG. 2

So, at the early stages of language development there was a direct link between the language signs and the real world. This direct connection was observed also in spoken, rather than only in written language expressions. It may be found even in modern languages, though rather seldom. For example the name of the cuckoo bird is derived from the “cuckoo” sound typical for this bird.

Then in the course of language evolution similarity was replaced by convention.

When you learn a language you join a convention. And when you speak you are understood only by the members of this convention, that is by the speakers of this language.

3. Disambiguation tools.

In natural language processing disambiguation is a process of meaning clarification. During disambiguation the meaning is clarified using formal methods or disambiguation tools:

1. context environment;

2. situation;

3. background information.

The background information is your common sense, your knowledge of the way the things are in life. We understand each other speaking the same language and translate due to continuous analysis of the context and situation and appropriate use of the relevant background information. This system is based on logic but the larger part of it is what we call intuition (subconscious logic).

The indirect relationship between the word and its denotatum makes a language ambiguous and result in polysemy of language units. Polysemy is the ability of a single word or expression to have different meanings.

The concept of a denotatum is sometimes different in different languages.

Connotation is additional meaning of a word.Connotation consists of all the components of a meaning that add some contrastive value to the basic concept of a word.

Polysemy and connotation are features of a language which hamper the solution of the translation problem. Whereas context environment, situation and background information make the translation possible.