Decoding the meaning of a sentence

Decoding the meaning of a sentence.
शाब्द बोध प्रक्रिया

Language maps Reality and is also intentional as per the Realists. The decoding of a sentence is possible as per the procedure explained below.

Shabda (शब्द) means valid testimony or a sentence.Shaabda (शाब्द) means the meaning of the sentence. The pre requisite for knowing the meaning of a sentence is that the listener should know the language which the speaker is speaking and the speaker should be a Reliable person (an आप्त).

Morpheme (पद) is the smallest meaningful or intelligible unit of a language. In the first step of decoding a sentence we become aware of the morpheme, we have knowledge of the morpheme ( पद ज्ञान).

The morpheme may have multiple meanings. We try to recollect the meanings of the morpheme (पदार्थस्मरण/ पदार्थधी/ व्यापार).

In the third step, as per the context, we try to think of the best meaning that is possible as per the intention of the speaker (तात्पर्य).There exists a relation between the word and it’s meaning by the Rule of Association explained in the sutra एक संबंधिन ज्ञानम अपर संबंधिन स्मारकम, that is, by the mention of one the other is remembered. By the mention of the word, it’s meaning is recollected. Vrutti (वृत्ती) is the relation between word and it’s meaning. Vrutti is of two types: Primary or literal or an Extended or intended.

All the word meanings are stringed together and thus a sentence is formed. The relation between the word meanings is known as sentence meaning (संसर्ग or वाक्यार्थ). Just the stringing of the words is not enough and there has to be mutual expectancy (आकांक्षा), compatibility( योग्यता) and proximity(सन्निधी) between the words.

Mutual expectancy means one word expects or is related to the other, Compatibility means that the words should not be absurd as in “sprinkling with fire”, Proximity means the words should be proximate in time and should not be spoken in different parts of time but continuous.

Thus decoding of verbal testimony is a detailed process to know the intention of the speaker.