From cognitive structures to positive and negative learning in a dialogue semantics perspective

Abstract

Part of language processing and understanding is building semantic structures or situation models. In this paper it is argued on the basis of previous works how dialogue semantics provides representations for formations of such cognitive structures. This cognitive twist is extended to a brief exposition of a dialogical model of learning which is then shown to automatically embrace a fourfold distinction into learning from the positive and learning from the negative, positive learning and negative learning, with the latter being two prime areas of interest of PLATO. As a result, this chapter contributes to a semantic derivation and clarification of different forms of learning on a propositional level. The chapter concludes with a brief outlook on language-relative issues pertinent to multilingual (learning) settings.