Abstract:

Database Semantics (DBS) models the cycle of natural language communication as a transition from the hear to the think to the speak and back to the hear mode (turn taking). In contradistinction to the substitution-driven sign-based approaches of truth-conditional semantics and phrase structure grammar, DBS is data-driven and agent-based. The purpose is a theory of semantics for an autonomous robot with language. Propositions are content in DBS, instead of denoting truth values (Sects. 1-3). Content is built from the semantic kinds of referent, property, and relation, which are concatenated by the classical semantic relations of structure, i.e. functor-argument and coordination. To enable reference as an agent-internal cognitive process, language and nonlanguage contents use the same computational data structure and operation kinds, and differ mostly in the presence vs. absence of language-dependent surface values. DBS consists of (i) an interface, (ii) a memory, and (iii) an operation component^①.The interface component mediates between the agent’s cognition and its external and internal environment, represented as raw data provided by sensors and activators (Sects. 4-7). The data of the agent’s moment by moment monitoring are stored at the memory’s now front. As part of the on-board control unit, the now front is the location for performing the procedures of the operation component, resulting in content.

Keywords: data structure; data base schema; pattern matching; turn taking; type-token; grounding; sensory and processing media and modalities; reference