Conceptual Linguistics project
It seems that the correlation between language and thought passes through the three (ontological, semantic and pragmatic) conceptual spaces. When using language, one needs to activate multi-dimensional links between chunks of information belonging to these spaces rather than to “build representations”. Thus, the structure of the content of utterances is at least an integrative result of para-information, ortho-information and meta-information.
The goal of the Conceptual Linguistics project is to conceive an upper-grammar of natural languages seen as interfaces as opposed to the operational multi-modal codes, the latter being used for thinking. This approach implies a new understanding of language signs, namely – unlike the objects which are perceived (or merely imagined) as objects per se – signs are seen as both objects per se and objects per alia.
Last but not least, let us note that at the origin of this theory, in addition to the material research on several languages (starting from Japanese) in the spirit of functional linguistics, there are primarily the results of critical analyses of the strongly developing at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries studies on the grammar of natural languages within the paradigm of computational linguistics (nat. language processing), on the one hand, and a rather rich experience of using KDD tools in application to linguistic phenomena, on the other hand.