2. Meanings and information units
We know from physics that quantity is a universal characteristic of the real world. However, quantity could not be perceived without another universal characteristic, which is the property to be substituted and which we will call electivity . Let us show their mutual need by a simple example of perceiving a spatial object. One can estimate an object’s size, that is, its quantitative value as its spatial extension, thanks to its boundaries in space11Here we leave aside that the perceived size of objects depends on a number of factors. See, however, Tal Makovski (2017), “investigating how the boundaries of an object and, particularly, the absence of these boundaries, impact its size perception”. (whether they are its external line, its color, matter, texture, form or structure). The mutual need of an extension and boundaries consists in that an extension doesn’t exist without boundaries, as well as boundaries don’t exist without extension. But their characteristics are different: When determining an object’s value in this way, we assume that what we call quantity has a property which distinguishes it from a boundary (which we consider ideal, that is, without extension). Quantity has a property to be accumulated: The smaller is included in the larger; and a boundary can’t be accumulated but has a property to be substituted. Take, for instance, a two-dimensional object on the surface, where its boundary is a line. Although the boundary has a quantitative value as everything in reality – its smaller part is included in a larger one, in order to get from this line to another one, it is necessary that the other line substitutes the first one. In other words, an extension has to be accumulated (quantity characteristic) and a boundary has to be substituted (electivity characteristic).
Our assumption is that speech information is also characterized by parameters with the quantity property of accumulating and the electivity one of substituting. But unlike the parameters of a real object, which represent its quantity, the parameters of information, being its component, don’t represent the real quantity of it and don’t indicate its substitutability. As the parameters don’t reflect the true quantity and electivity characteristics of the information, there must be a mechanism of their genesis to be introduced into information. One can explain the difference between quantity and electivity with minimal number of notions (in order not to “multiply entities without necessity”) through the use of derivative elements generated in operations from initial ones. Given that quantity and electivity are mutually needed, the respective operations – quantitative and elective ones – must be coupled. Coupling operations means that both operations are being performed together from the initial elements. The quantitative operation, reflecting the quantity property, introduces a relationq 0 ˂ Q , where q 0 is a quantity being part of the quantity Q 22One can see quantity determined as above in brain. Signals perceived by our five major senses represent object’s quantifiable parameters – bright or dim light of a particular colour, loud or soft sound of a particular pitch, strong or not strong touch, strong or weak smell, intense or poorly perceived taste. Quantitative parameters are integrated in a process of recognition – as a shape and colour of the object, as a cumulative effect caused by stimulation of olfactory receptors, etc.. We don’t use the symbol ˂ as in mathematics to mark that one number is less than another. It means here that the quantity Q hasq 0 as its accumulated part. The elective operation performs a substitution e 0 → E , where e 0 is a substituted element, E , a substituting one. The elements brought out from the operations become static and constitute bits of nonsemantic information. We will call these elements operational states and the combination of the operational states accompanying a semantic information in speech,operational information . The operational states can be used in semantic information while remaining coupled or separately (see further). So the quantity operation means that the initial quantitative state q 0 is included in the including derivative quantitative state Q 33The terms “includes, including” and “is included” are chosen because they express the gist of respective operational relations and are in no way related to set theory. and the electivity operation means that the initial elective state e 0 is substituted by the substituting derivative elective state E , introducing a relation of separate states. There is a difference between the initial and the derivative states of the two operations. If the initial states are determined only by their opposition to the operation as a process, the derivative states are also characterized by a different relation to the initial states. If the derivative quantitative state can be determined as including, the initial state remains undetermined in the operation. It can, in turn, include another state or no state but always accompanies the derivative state and that’s what makes it involved in quantity. Similarly, if the derivative elective state can be determined as substituting, the initial state remains undetermined. It can substitute another state or no state but the substituting state is formed through it. That’ why not only the substituting but also the substituted state is characterized by electivity.
The available means of describing linguistic meanings, in particular by means of componential analysis, semantic decomposition or through their definition, disintegrate the meanings via other whole meanings to reveal their structure. We say “whole” on the understanding that words can be found to express them. So meanings are described with recourse to a form. But can we describe meanings without recourse to forms?
Aphasia demonstrates that meaning and its form diverge in certain circumstances. Dronkers and Baldo (2009: 343) describe patients with anomic aphasia as follows:
When searching for a word, some patients with anomic aphasia paraphrase using words that they can easily retrieve. For instance, a patient shown a drawing of a pair of tongs said “You pick up things with it.” Such circumlocutions demonstrate that patients with anomic aphasia have lost neither conceptual understanding nor the ability to build coherent sentences and phrases. Whereas circumlocutions may be a characteristic feature of the speech of some patients with anomic aphasia, the main characteristic displayed by other patients may be periods of slow and halting speech as they search for the correct word. For instance, when shown a picture, a patient might say, “It’s a, ummm, uhhh, a, a, a … I know what it is, it’s a … Aww hell, it’s there but I just can’t get it.”
The message of the examples with aphasia is that the patients possessing the notion of the thing can’t remember the word which means the notion that enables naming.
Now, let’s imagine that a word is omitted (or not heard), but we can, however, understand the sentence. Its understanding is possible if we turn to a meaning which is to a greater or lesser extent determined by the sentence or the context so that the missing word can be absent in language at all or, if it is not, be selected by its meaning. For example, to understand the sentence Up the <…>, on the second floor , we turn to the meaning ʻsomething we can climb to get on the second floorʼ or to more specific meanings, which can be then expressed by the wordsstairs, ladder, tree , etc. W. Chafe (2018: 28) argues: “Because the thought-sound association is such a pervasive aspect of daily experience, it can be surprisingly difficult for anyone who is old enough to speak to separate the two. … I recently had occasion to think over well-known film director whose name … was briefly inhibited. … I was conscious of everything about him except his name. It wasn’t long before the sound Alfred Hitchcock found its way back to my consciousness, but while it was absent the thought-sound association lacked its bottom half. … Separating a thought from a sound can be experienced in the opposite direction in rote learning.” It is also known that polysemy is explained by the ability of a linguistic sign to accumulate more than one meaning under one form. But a word polysemous in dictionary loses its polysemy (or actualizes double meaning) in speech.
All this shows that meanings activated in speech by a speaker or an addressee are detached from the signs even if the semantic relations among the words are formed or maintained. We will call meanings in speech detached from signs information units . The information units get rid of the symbols to become an informational continuum, a formulated thought.
Now we will proceed to the description of information units without recourse to forms and see in what way operational states characterize them.