Skip to main content

Univocal, Equivocal, and Analogous Terms


This is a topic which we will probably have to return to in the future, but a start has to be made.  Definitions are inextricably bound up with terms, and one classification of terms  divides them up into Univocal, Equivocal, and Analogous.  Let us briefly review these three classes.  
  • Univocal Term: A terms that has only one meaning.  That is, it signifies only one concept, and thus corresponds to only one definition.  Such a term always has the same intension wherever it is used.   E.g. the term "entomology" signifies the study of insects. 
  • Equivocal Term: A term that has more than one meaning.  That is, it signifies more than one concept, and thus corresponds to more than one definition.  An equivocal term has different intensions when it is used.  E.g. the term "chihuahua" can signify (a) a breed of dog; (b) a state of Mexico. 
  • Analogous Term:  A term that is intended to convey one or more similar characteristics that exist between two concepts.  E.g. the term "data owner" is applied to individuals who have no legal title to the data they manage, but are expected to exercise responsibilities like those owners would typically exercise.  Sometimes an analogous term can be no different to an equivocal term. 
It is not always easy to know if a univocal term really is univocal.  For instance, I am not aware of any equivocal use of "entomology".  There might be, but I am unaware of it if it exists.  Also, a univocal term might become equivocal in the future.  

With respect to equivocal terms, a big problem is that there are far more concepts than there are terms to describe them.  This is a reason why equivocal terms come into being, and there seems to be no way to avoid it happening.  From a practical point of view the problems with equivocal terms arise when a term is being used equivocally in communication.  For instance, if I use "backup" within a group managing databases, everybody knows what I mean - even if " backup " has other meanings, such as in police operations. 

One way round this is to maintain specialized vocabularies for "subject fields" (as the terminologists call them).  Roughly speaking this means that an equivocal term can be taken to be univocal in a specific context.  We will need to come back to this.

Analogous terms are more difficult.    Problems include: (a) only one of the related objects is identified; (b) the characteristics supposedly in common between the two objects are never identified.  This means that an analogous term may not actually signify a concept - it may be unintelligible and just used for emotive effect.  It certainly implies that there is a more complex relationship between analogous terms and definitions.  This too we will have to return to.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Create Your Own Social Networking Site

Create Your Own Social Networking Site JCOW: Ethical Hacking Top 10 reasons to choose Jcow:- 1. Handle more traffic - Clean codes and Dynamic caching can lower the CPU load and  speed up your website. 2 Make your site more interactive - Well designed Jcow applications help you members to connect and communicate with others more effectively. 3 Add questions to the Registration Form - You can add new member fields, which will be displayed to the registration form, profile form, and the member browsing form. 4 Easily share stuff - Within the AJAX sharing Box, your members can publish status,  photos, videos, and blogs. 5 Customize and Extend your Jcow Network - A Jcow network consists of core apps(like "Friends" and "Messages") and optional apps(like "Blogs" and ""Videos"). You can enable/disable optional apps. You can also develop your own apps. 6 Every profile could be Unique - Members can customize their own profile theme and  add music play...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problem of Abstraction in Definitions of Data Objects

I think there is a major problem in not being able to understand and work with different levels of abstraction.  By "abstraction" in this sense I mean one concept system that somehow describes or defines (not merely relates to) another concept system.  I think this is a big problem for definitions in data models. Let us take an example in a retail business such as mortgage banking: Customer Name.  Customer Name exists in the business.  They use it all the time.  Maybe it is sometimes called Borrower Name, but the concept is the same.  This is the Level 1 abstraction. Now let us think of data values in a column in a table that holds Customer Name.  These data values are stored as a code of 1's and 0's.  Of course these bits are rendered into something we can read.  However, this is not the same as the Customer Name in the business.  I worked for a place where they prefixed the name of anyone who had recently left with "ZZZ"....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Humpty-Dumpty Principle in Definitions

In dealing with empty concepts, we came across the issue that if somebody uses a term that potentially has an unintelligible definition, they are likely to defend themselves by quickly making up some kind of definition.   I strongly suspect that in such cases, the usage of the term will be inconsistent with the definition.  Which brings us to Humpty-Dumpty. Lewis Carroll (Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is best known for his children's' books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass .  It is in the latter that Humpty Dumpty - an argumentative egg perched on a wall has the following exchange with Alice: 'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!' `I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' `But "glory" doesn't mean "...
Post a Comment
Read more