meaningsuch

MeaningSuch is a term used in certain theoretical discussions of language and meaning to denote a proposed method for capturing the semantic contribution of phrases that use such or such that. In this view, the meaning of a sentence is not fixed by word-by-word translation alone but is computed by a context-sensitive operator that links syntactic structure to a semantic content via a such locus. The term positions itself as a label for a family of approaches rather than a single algorithm.

Origin and usage: MeaningSuch first appeared in informal debates and online glossaries in the mid-2010s among researchers exploring context-driven semantics. It gained limited traction as a shorthand in discussions about how discourse salience, focus, and presupposition influence truth-conditions. While not widely adopted in mainstream formal semantics, the idea has been referenced in computational linguistics discussions as a hypothetical construct for testing context-sensitive models.

Conceptual model: In the meaningSuch framework, a linguistic input M is paired with a context C to produce a semantic content S = meaningSuch(M, C). The mechanism is not fixed; writers describe it as a compositional operator that binds to such phrases to select a subset of referents or a property that satisfies a relation introduced in C. Example: “Such problems are solvable” would map to the set of problems under discussion that satisfy the property P, yielding the proposition “these problems are solvable.”

Relation to other work: MeaningSuch intersects with theories of generalized quantifiers, demonstratives, and focus-sensitive operators. Critics argue that as a placeholder concept it risks conflating pragmatic inference with semantics, while supporters view it as a useful heuristic for modeling context dependence. As of writing, meaningSuch remains a speculative term rather than a standard part of semantic theory.