meaningsfrom

Meaningsfrom is a term used in linguistics and artificial intelligence to denote the source or basis from which a meaning is derived or asserted. It functions as a provenance marker for semantic content, indicating that a given interpretation depends on specific inputs such as context, world knowledge, discourse, or an underlying knowledge base. The term is not part of a single standardized formalism, but it appears in theoretical discussions and annotation schemes to clarify how meanings are obtained.

In formal or computational frameworks, meaningsfrom can be treated as a function or relation that links an expression and a source to a particular meaning. For example, meaningsfrom may map a linguistic expression along with a context and available knowledge to a chosen interpretation. This helps separate the semantic representation itself from the basis used to derive it, enabling clearer analysis of how context or information sources influence understanding.

Usage examples occur in natural language processing, discourse analysis, and knowledge representation. For instance, the word bank can have multiple senses; meaningsfrom(context=finance) would favor the financial institution sense, while meaningsfrom(context=geography) might highlight a riverside feature. In multimodal AI, meaningsfrom can annotate meanings with the modality or data source that supported them, such as text, images, or sensor readings.

Meaningsfrom is related to concepts like sense, disambiguation, context, and provenance. It is most useful as a descriptive aid in studies of interpretation and in annotation tasks that require traceable sources for semantic content. It remains one of several tools for organizing how meanings depend on their origins in linguistic and computational analysis.