A systems theoretical view on computational semiotics. Modeling text understanding as meaning constitution by SCIPS

In a rather sharp departure from CL and AI approaches, modeling in computational semiotics (CS) neither presupposes rule-based or symbolic formats for linguistic knowledge representations, nor does it subscribe to the notion of symbolically represented world knowledge as some static structures that may be abstracted from and formatted independently of the way they are processed. Consequently, knowledge structures and the processes operating on them are to be modeled procedurally and ought to be implemented as algorithms. They determine semiotic cognitive information processing systems (SCIPS) as collections of cognitive information processing devices whose semiotic character consists in their multilevel representational system of (working) structures emerging from and being modified by such processing. According to different types of cognitive modeling distinguished in the past, computational semiotics can be characterized as aiming at the dynamics of emergent meaning constituted by processes which may be simulated as multiresolutional representations within the frame of an ecological information processing paradigm.