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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=ZH-CN link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='text-justify-trim:punctuation'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:0cm'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Dear colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>In my teaching career of Information Science, I was often puzzled by the following inference, I call it <b>Paradox of Meaning and Information</b> or <b>Armenia Paradox</b>. In order not to produce unnecessary ambiguity, I state it below and strictly limit our discussion within the human context.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Suppose an earthquake occurred in Armenia last night and all of the main media of the world have given the report about it. On the second day, two students A and B are putting forward a dialogue facing the newspaper headline “<b>Earthquake Occurred in Armenia Last Night</b>”:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Q: What is the <b>MEANING</b> contained in this sentence?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Q: What is the <b>INFORMATION</b> contained in this sentence?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>A: An earthquake occurred in Armenia last night.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Thus we come to the conclusion that <b>MEANING is equal to INFORMATION</b>, or strictly speaking, human meaning is equal to human information. In Linguistics, the study of human meaning is called Human Semantics; In Information Science, the study of human information is called Human Informatics.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Historically, Human Linguistics has two definitions: 1, It is the study of human language; 2, It, also called Anthropological Linguistics or Linguistic Anthropology, is the historical and cultural study of a human language. Without loss of generality, we only adopt the first definitions here, so we regard Human Linguistics and Linguistics as the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Due to Human Semantics is one of the disciplines of Linguistics and its main task is to deal with the human meaning, and Human Informatics is one of the disciplines of Information Science and its main task is to deal with the human information; Due to human meaning is equal to human information, thus we have the following corollary:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>A: <b>Human Informatics is a subfield of Human Linguistics</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>According to the definition of general linguists, language is a vehicle for transmitting information, therefore, Linguistics is a branch of Human Informatics, so we have another corollary:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>B: <b>Human Linguistics is a subfield of Human Informatics</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:22.0pt'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Apparently, A and B are contradictory or logically unacceptable. It is a paradox in Information Science and Linguistics. In most cases, a settlement about the related paradox could lead to some important discoveries in a subject, but how should we understand this paradox?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:0cm'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:0cm'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:3.6pt;text-indent:0cm'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif'>Xueshan</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:DengXian'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>