We learn new words by absorbing the totality of their associations and connections with other words, with particular pragmatic situations, with particular emotions, with particular sensory stimulation, etc. Words are embedded in many patterns across multiple dimensions of experience. And this is why the natural language understanding component of artificial intelligence is so difficult to solve. Words are the tip of a huge invisible iceberg. How does one make conscious and formally map out all that unconscious complexity? Make it computable? - Sean McBride

Is there a word for that? - Todd Hoff

Not one that rolls off the tip of my tongue. - Sean McBride

But there is a large sector of natural language that can be skimmed off and quickly mapped with algebraic and logical formalisms. - Sean McBride