tähendushoov

Tähendushoov, literally “stream of meaning” in Estonian, is a theoretical concept used in semiotics and cognitive linguistics to describe how meaning flows from a linguistic form into mental representations across varying contexts. The term combines tähendus (meaning) and hoov (stream, flow) to emphasize the dynamic, directional nature of meaning as it travels through discourse and cognition.

Mechanism: When a word is encountered, its primary sense is activated; depending on surrounding text, utterance, and cultural knowledge, the meaning can branch into related senses. The process often involves metaphor and metonymy, causing additional semantic fields to become relevant. The hoov metaphor highlights that meaning is not a fixed value but a network that shifts with context, speaker intention, and audience expectations.

Examples: In the sentence “bank by the river,” the word bank channels a contrasting set of associations from that in “I deposited money in the bank.” Across texts, the same form can accrue layers of meaning as readers bring assumptions from prior discourse, culture, and personal experience. This flow of meaning can be modeled as a branching network in which each context selects a subset of possible senses.

Applications and limitations: The concept informs lexicography, discourse analysis, and natural language processing by highlighting how context shapes interpretation. Computational models of tähendushoov often use spreading activation or contextual embeddings to simulate semantic flow. Limitations include cross-language variability, subjective interpretation, and the difficulty of quantifying dynamic meaning.

See also: semantics, polysemy, pragmatics, metaphor, semiotics, discourse analysis.