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Emergent Semantics

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Bottom-up semantics; Evolutionary semantics

Definition

Emergent semantics refers to a set of principles and techniques analyzing the evolution of decentralized semantic structures in large scale distributed information systems. Emergent semantics approaches model the semantics of a distributed system as an ensemble of relationships between syntactic structures. They consider both the representation of semantics and the discovery of the proper interpretation of symbols as the result of a self-organizing process performed by distributed agents exchanging symbols and having utilities dependent on the proper interpretation of the symbols. This is a complex systems perspective on the problem of dealing with semantics.

Historical Background

Syntax is classically considered as the study of the rules of symbol formation and manipulation [9]. Despite its wide usage in many contexts, the notion of semanticsoften lacks a precise definition. As a least common denominator, it can be...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Philippe Cudré-Mauroux

Authors
  1. Philippe Cudré-Mauroux
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philippe Cudré-Mauroux .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Avigdor Gal

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Cudré-Mauroux, P. (2018). Emergent Semantics. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1311

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