Monosemantics
Monosemantics (from ancient Greek μόνος monos , German ` ` alone, only '' and σημαίνειν sēmaínein , ` ` denote '', ` ` belonging to the sign '') is a theoretical classification term for languages and means that every word or term has exactly one meaning. In contrast to this, natural languages are always polysemantic, ie a word can have several meanings or connotations . In technical languages, monosemantics is achieved to a higher degree by clearly defining colloquial terms and thus freeing them from connotations or introducing new terms for description. 'Through logical formalization and categorization, attempts were made, especially in the 1950s to 1970s, to analyze natural languages and to represent the individual components monosemantically.
Real monosemantics can be found as a result of these efforts in formal languages such as the programming languages used today , in which an underlying mathematical model describes the meaning of expressions completely and unambiguously. However, monosemantics does not correspond to the associative and metaphorical use of language by people. B. also shows in the difficulty of machine translation of languages.
literature
- Sebastian Löbner: Semantics: An Introduction . de Gruyter, Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-11-015674-1 .
- Jennifer Coates: The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries . Croom helmet, 1983
- Semantics of computer programs ( PDF; 870 kB)