A sentence can be deomposed into a set of descriptive units. A descriptive unit is considered simply as representing a set of situations without attempting to capture the deep semantic structure as in many propositional theories. It is possible to specify a set of rules by which a sentence can be decomposed into a set of descriptive units and in turn a sentence can be composed from a set of decomposed descriptive units.
Descriptive units are also fundamental units of meaning from which word meaning can be computed.
This assumption was supported in an experiment which traced the processes of meaning acquisition by computing word meanings through simple sentences or descriptive units. Back to previous page. Back to home page.