RE-DEFINING A LEXICON & LOOKING AT ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY (Journal of Legal Technology Risk Management Book 3)

For any sentence to be intelligible, both speaker and hearer must take one basic idea for granted: that the words in the sentences we speak have the same meanings to both of us. If they do not, we are in a world where nothing is intelligible. The purpose of this paper is to describe a new process for defining the meaning of words beyond the usual historical usage or contextual methods used by current dictionaries and search engines. The new definitional method described in this paper adds precision and clarity to the historical usage definitions. A word is any vocal or written sign, which connotes a meaning. Meanings are concepts that we can understand: what we perceive, remember, imagine, reason or conceptualize.