LINGUISTIC AND NON-LINGUISTIC 'UNDERSTANDING' OF LINGUISTIC TOKENS

摘要

This Memorandum explores the distinction between recognizing an utterance, on the one hand, as a "symptom" of the state of affairs in or confronting its origirvator and, on the other hand, as a linguistic tool. It is suggested that although only the first kind of understanding is required to enable a computer to accept data and answer questions in verbal form, such ability is no guarantee of its comprehension of all aspects of language To attain full linguistic comprehension, the program must also embody at least a "skeleton representation" of the 1inguistic context in which an utterance originates and from which it derives its linguistic significance as a goal-directed operator.