Differential Linguistics at NIST TREC

In the course of carrying out NIST TRECs I created and tested a computer program for textual information searches, based on ‘understanding’ the meanings of words in texts. The computer using the program ‘understands’ not only the abstract, standardized meanings of the words in the text, but the specific, concrete meanings given to those words by the author(s) of the texts. In this article I attempt to bring the language I used to create the algorithm of the program in line with the generally accepted, formalized language of mathematics. (Doing this I must apply the philosophy and metaphysics of Cynicism.) Axiom 1. Words exist. Definition 1. I understand a word in any given language to be a combination of letters in that format in which the word appears in print in a generally accepted dictionary of that language. That combination of letters by which the word is fixated in the dictionary is recognized as the ‘normal form’ of that word, to which all ‘non-normal’ forms of the given word can be reduced; by a ‘non-normal’ form of a word I mean a form which arises from adding prefixes, suffixes, endings, etc., to the normal form of the word; or a form resulting from the introduction of a grammatical error into the word. Use of the dictionary of a language allows one to present each word in numerical form. Differential Linguistics thus works with numbers; and the system for reducing non-normal forms of words to their normal forms can be seen as a system for reducing words to numbers. Definition 2. The meaning of a word is how the word is used and what the word is. Definition 3. Any word taken separately in its normal form is a ‘non-predicative definition’. I have called combinations of normal forms of words – nouns/pronouns-verbs-adjectives – ‘predicative definitions’. Note. Noam Chomsky. In 1957 Noam Chomsky [1] proposed calling the combinations of words that convey the meaning of a sentence ‘kernel sentences’. But I have preferred to follow an immeasurably more ancient tradition which had its beginning with Aristotle, and to call such combinations ‘predicative definitions’ (if they are reduced to their normal forms.) Definition 4. I understand only the normal form of a word to be a non-predicative definition; where a non-predicative definition and an abstraction/universal [6; ‘The World of Universals’] are the same thing. I claim that any non-predicative definition has all words’ meanings. Clarification. Philosophy. I have chosen, as an intellectual basis for my program, the philosophy of Cynicism, which I see as superseding the philosophy of Idealism. Acknowledgement. I thank Dr.Inna Rozentsvit, NYU and Member of the Russian Academy of Medicinal Sciences Dr.Gennady Sukhikh for saving my life. Also, I am immensely grateful to my friend Aleksandr Syrkin, who always helps me. Without him this article could not be written.