The book gives a comprehensive discussion of Database Semantics (DBS) as
an agent-based data-driven theory of how natural language communication
essentially works. In language communication, agents switch between
speak mode, driven by cognition-internal content (input) resulting in
cognition-external raw data (e.g. sound waves or pixels, which have no
meaning or grammatical properties but can be measured by natural
science), and hear mode, driven by the raw data produced by the
speaker resulting in cognition-internal content.
The motivation is to compare two approaches for an ontology of
communication: agent-based data-driven vs. sign-based
substitution-driven. Agent-based means: design of a cognitive agent
with (i) an interface component for converting raw data into cognitive
content (recognition) and converting cognitive content into raw data
(action), (ii) an on-board, content-addressable memory (database) for
the storage and content retrieval, (iii) separate treatments of the
speak and the hear mode. Data-driven means: (a) mapping a cognitive
content as input to the speak-mode into a language-dependent surface as
output, (b) mapping a surface as input to the hear-mode into a cognitive
content as output. Oppositely, sign-based means: no distinction
between speak and hear mode, whereas substitution-driven means: using
a single start symbol as input for generating infinitely many outputs,
based on substitutions by rewrite rules.
Collecting recent research of the author, this beautiful, novel and
original exposition begins with an introduction to DBS, makes a
linguistic detour on subject/predicate gapping and slot-filler
repetition, and moves on to discuss computational pragmatics, inference
and cognition, grammatical disambiguation and other related topics. The
book is mostly addressed to experts working in the field of
computational linguistics, as well as to enthusiasts interested in the
history and early development of this subject, starting with the
pre-computational foundations of theoretical computer science and
symbolic logic in the 30s.
