On Semantic Spaces

This contribution gives an overview about different approaches to semantic spaces. It is not a exhaustive survey, but rather a personal view on different approaches which use metric spaces for the representation of meanings of linguistic units. The aim is to demonstrate the similarities of apparently different approaches and to inspire the generalisation of semantic spaces tailored to the representation of texts to arbitrary semiotic artefacts. I assume that the primary purpose of a semiotic system is communication. A semiotic system S̃ consists of signs s. Signs fulfil a communicative function f (s) within the semiotic system in order to meet the communicative requirements of system’s user. There are different similarity relations between functions of signs. In its most general form a semantic space can be defined as follows: