Meaning Representation

Abstract

What is meaning? What is the meaning of a word, a phrase, a text? Usually, in our everyday life, when the meaning of some word is not clear to us, we look it up in a dictionary. In this case it may be stated, that the meaning of the word we are interested in is its dictionary definition. Let us consider, as an example, the meaning of extremophile in the Merriam-Webster Online English Dictionary at http://www.merriam-webster.com:

extremophile, noun : an organism that lives under extreme environmental conditions (as in a hot spring or ice cap)

It may be noticed then, that the meaning of extremophile or what the word extremofile signifies is, in fact, this very concrete object, that exact living being which is described in the previously given definition. Following this line of thinking, the dictionary definition is thus seen not as the meaning but as an explanation of that meaning in words other than extremophile, or, in more general terms, a meaning representation.