leercontext

Leercontext is a term used in linguistics and artificial intelligence to denote the absence of contextual influence in interpretive processes. The word blends leer, the German adjective meaning empty or blank, with context, signaling a baseline state in which prior discourse elements do not shape meaning. In this sense, leercontext functions as a neutral or default context against which statements can be interpreted.

Origin and usage: The concept has appeared in theoretical discussions about how language models and chat systems handle prompts with little to no history. It is commonly used as a control condition in experiments evaluating the impact of contextual embeddings, discourse history, and user-provided history on interpretation and response generation.

Formal concept: In semantic modeling, leercontext refers to a minimal context representation that imposes only universal or non-domain-specific information. When leercontext is active, interpretations depend more on general world knowledge and pragmatic norms than on specific prior discourse.

Applications: In natural language processing, leercontext provides a baseline for measuring the strength of context effects. In dialog systems, it simulates a user starting a new conversation, helping researchers assess how quickly models switch to topic-relevant responses.

Examples: The sentence "It's cold today" may be disambiguated differently with and without leercontext, where the latter relies on universal cues such as temperature discourse rather than prior dialogue.

Limitations: Real communication rarely operates with an entirely empty context; leercontext is a simplifying abstraction that may underrepresent the richness of shared knowledge. See also: Context, Pragmatics, Discourse, Context window, Embeddings.