Semiotic decoding

Let us take the Gregorian calender system (i.e. the date system we nearly always use) as an example. This is particularly illustrative as a non-natural language semiotic class in that 

It is used nearly universally, regardless of which natural language is being used. 

Gregorian dates have a day, a month and optionally a year and the task of the decoder is to determine the value of each of these from the text. The same date can give rise to a number of different text encodings, for example 

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Rgure 5.3 The flow of an entire text-analysis system (only four semiotic decoders/translators are shown for snccinctness). 

The main problem in natural-language text decoding is dealing with homographs, whether tiiey be accidental, part-of-speech or abbreviation homographs. Many systems choose to handle each of these separately, and in particular abbreviation homographs are often dealt with at the same time or in the same module as semiotic classification. 

Given these two problems of segmentation and classification, one can rightly ask how then is it possible that humans can perform these tasks and thereby decode the speech when listening The answer again lies in our model of semiotic communication. We find... 

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