Language as labeling

Is it possible to create a system, maybe similar to the periodic table
of elements in chemistry, which would allow us to break words into
elementary components?
IMO such a system would allow to label all the possible combinations of
these elements into words, concepts, etc. and create a kind of meta
language.
?
JP

Sure!  In English the elementary components of words are letters.  In the 
ideographic languages like Chinese the elements are brush strokes.

Perhaps you mean the elements of the *meaning* of words.  If that's what you 
mean then I suspect the answer is no.  Take a word and try to identify the 
elements.  An apt word here would be "philosophy".  I think there are no 
dividing lines between the various shades of meaning that people use when 
using the word "philosophy"; instead of a set of elements there is a shaded, 
blurry map where one meaning blends imperceptably into another.  We talk of 
things like "the main thrust" or "the general gist" or "the general idea" of 
the various things that could be called "philosophy"

There are ways to define "fuzzy" areas but they do no lend themselves well 
to tabular displays.

Ed

Morphology does some of the things JP wants. I think if you take a good 
course in mdoern linguistics, you'll both understand JP's question a bit 
better.

Yes;

A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one
or more morphemes.

 http://www.**--****.com/ (linguistics)

...a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic
interpretation. Morphemes are, generally, a distinctive collocation of
phonemes (as the free form pin or the bound form -s of pins) having no
smaller meaningful members.

English example: The word "unbelievable" has three morphemes "un-",
(negatory) a bound morpheme, "-believe-" a free morpheme, and "-able".
"un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both are affixes.

Types of morphemes

-Free morphemes like town, dog can appear with other lexemes (as in
town-hall or dog-house) or they can stand alone, or "free". Allomorphs
are variants of a morpheme, e.g. the plural marker in English is
sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /-?z/.

-Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes
to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and
suffixes.

-Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so
on. (as in the dog morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme
s becomes dogs).

-Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive)
another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy", for example, to give
"happiness".

 http://www.**--****.com/ 
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

In human language, a phoneme is the basic theoretical unit that can be
used to distinguish words or morphemes. That is, changing a phoneme in
a word produces either nonsense, or a different word with a different
meaning.

Phonemes in {*filter*}languages are not physical sounds, but mental
abstractions of speech sounds. A phoneme is a family of speech sounds
(phones) that the speakers of a language think of as being, and usually
hear as, the same sound. A "perfect" alphabet is one that has one
symbol for each phoneme.

In sign languages, a phoneme is a similarly basic theoretical unit of
hand shape, motion, position, or {*filter*} expression. It was formerly
called a chereme, but usage changed to phoneme when it was recognized
that the mental abstractions involved are essentially the same as in
{*filter*}languages.

Phonemics, a branch of phonology, is the study of the systems of
phonemes of languages.

 http://www.**--****.com/ 

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is
characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract where there
is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis.

This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a
constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract.
The additional requirement is that vowels function as syllabic units:
it is this criterion that distinguishes vowels from semivowels (and
approximants, which in some languages may be slightly more
constricted).

 http://www.**--****.com/ 

I guess that is what I mean and I think or at least I hope that the
answer should be yes.
JP



Your example is far too complex to base your negative answer on it. If
I may use chemistry as analogy, identifying the elements of philosophy
is like trying to find the formula for a very complex molecule before
you know anything about chemical elements.
JP




If it really is imperceptibly there could not be any difference between
them, but if only one or a just a few elements change, as in a complex
formula, then we could have a perceptible change.
JP

I am not talking at all about morphology.
I will use a simple example to try to clarify what I am asking.
The chemical formula for water is H2O and we can translate the word
water in all the languages without changing the formula.
OTOH we had a word for water a long time before we knew its chemical
formula and its translation in any language was very clear.
IMO the common elements of the meaning of water are related to its
perception by our sensors and not to its chemical formula.
IOW the elements that give meaning to a word might be related to our
perception, to our sensors and not to its morphology.
JP

This already exists. It is known as numerology.

The equivalent is that of written music as it relates to the actual music.

Having said that, even with music , the beauty (written or actual )is in the 
eye(ear)of the beholder, so , as usual, reality is not what you hear, read 
or have interpreted, but what you make of it at any given time.

You have, of course, to be a trained musician to "hear the  music"-befor it 
is played, as with any discipline, and even the very advanced may hear 
'almost'  the same but be affected differently.

The whole essence here, is that as individuals develop a more advanced sense 
of self, they often attempt to develop an "uncommon" communication level 
with those who are not on the same wavelength.

BOfL 

SNIP

Very informative Imm.

Who was the Richard Cranium who decided not to spell phonetic with an 'f'?

BOfL 

In the 16th century there was an effort amoung the French Philosphes as
well as the English Royal Society to develop a "Natural Language".
This would be a language conforming to the tennents of the scientific
method.  This lead to the creation of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
A number of them still kicking around today in revised form.  A google
search of Diderot will lead to more on this information.

Stu

Thank you, but this is not what I am talking about. You gave me the
same reference a few months ago.
We can understand each other without dictionaries, it has to be
something that we all have in common. Some type of  model that we
internalize (non verbally) and against which we compare whenever we
communicate verbally.
JP

I am not talking about numerology but about meaning.
I look at words as "formulas" or "tri dimensional figures", and
these formulas or figures are the equivalent of what we call meaning.
I am trying to find how we create these "formulas" or "tri
dimensional figures", to find what they are made of, their elements
or building blocks.
JP


Interesting stuff but it is not the same as what I am asking.
JP

I've tried reading through the various replies so as to understand
your question and am still not sure what you are asking.

Do you mean something like Roger Shank;s Conceptual Dependency theory
as highlighted at: http://www.**--****.com/ 
or something else?

I haven't checked into Cyc lately.  It appears it's open source now:
 http://www.**--****.com/ 

Immortalist gave some pretty good information.  You're going to have
some problems with prefixes such as "in" as in "inflammable",
"infamous",
and "inedible".

Most words have several meanings and each person has a slightly
different
conotations.  I've recently had a discussion about wheather "A
contradicts B"
should be translated into FOPL as A -> ~B or A <-> ~B.  I have yet to
track
down a authoritative source on the matter.  The Law of
Non-Contradiction as
I understand Aristotle expressing it is ~(A & ~A) and yet this doesn't
answer
the question since LNC is about a single thing being and not being
rather than
about two things where it could be the case that both may not be.  I've
given
this discussion a rest because I might just be using a non-standard
interpretation.

There are also binding problems.  Consider these sentences:
Mary gave Jim her book.
Mary gave Jim his book.
The dog gave the cat its bone.
The dog gave the cat its scar.

In the last case it's clear what "its" binds to but not so in the prior
sentence.
Why is that?

No.
JP


I am looking at words as descriptions, as labels attached to a
"something".
The names of the labels have been created mostly accidentally by our
culture and morphology is of little help here.
I will try to use water again as an example.
"Water (from the "/wiki/Old_English_language" word wer; c.f
"/wiki/German_language" "Wasser", from "/wiki/Proto-Indo-European"
*wod-or, "water") is a tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless (it
has a slight hint of blue) substance in its pure form that is essential
to all known forms of life" and is known also as the most universal
solvent".
IMO the basic elements of this definition are:
1. taste
2. Odor
3. Color
4. Substance
Now if we look at these elements, they all describe information
perceived  by 4 different sensors, taste, smell, visual, tactile.
The information perceived by all these sensors is connected and a label
is attached, in this case water.
The basic idea is that starting from the information perceived by all
our sensors we create a lot of combinations and we label these
combinations.
If we would label them the way we do in chemistry it would be clear
that by adding.subtracting or changing elements to a formula we achieve
another formula but it does not happen this way with the language.
For example going back to water if I replace one element in its
description, let's say substance with gas, I could describe air.
OTOH there is no clear connection between the 2 words, water and air,
but according to this way of looking at their perceptive description
they are different only according to the information perceived by one
sensor.     
JP

I think it's valid to say that if A contradicts B, it means that A and
B cannot be both true at the same time:
NOT(A AND B) = 1
or:
(NOT A) OR (NOT B) = 1
or a number of other ways.

btw, how is that related to a question at hand?

hmm...uhhh...so what? what's your point?