From Classical to Quantum Models of Meaning
Traditional linguistics and semantics are deeply rooted in classical logic: a word has a definition (a set of necessary and sufficient conditions), a statement is true or false, and meaning is compositional (the meaning of a sentence is the sum of its parts). The Institute's Quantum Linguistics project challenges these foundations by exploring startling analogies between the behaviors of language and the principles of quantum mechanics. We propose that at the level of deep comprehension, words and concepts do not have fixed, determinate meanings. Instead, they exist in a state of superposition—a cloud of potential meanings and associations that only collapses into a specific interpretation upon the 'measurement' of context, expectation, and interaction. Similarly, the meaning of a sentence is not merely the sum of its words; it emerges from a holistic, entangled state where the whole fundamentally changes the possible values of the parts. This isn't mere metaphor; we are developing formal mathematical models using quantum probability theory to predict semantic phenomena that classical models cannot explain.
Modeling Semantic Phenomena with Quantum Formalism
Our research has successfully used quantum formalisms to model several puzzling linguistic effects. The 'garden path sentence' phenomenon (e.g., 'The horse raced past the barn fell.') can be modeled as a quantum superposition of two syntactic structures that collapses into the wrong one, leading to confusion. The disjunction fallacy in human reasoning (where people judge 'A or B' as less likely than 'A' alone in certain contexts) mirrors quantum interference patterns. Most compellingly, we model conceptual combination (like 'pet fish') not as a logical intersection of features, but as the creation of a new entangled state. The prototype for 'pet fish' is not the average of 'pet' and 'fish'; it's a new emergent concept (like a guppy) that arises from the interaction. Our quantum models accurately predict human typicality ratings for such combinations where classical models fail. We are also exploring 'quantum narrative,' where story events are treated as measurements that collapse the superposition of possible character motivations and plot directions, with earlier events creating 'entanglement' that influences later collapses.
Implications for AI and the Nature of Consciousness
The implications of Quantum Linguistics are profound. For artificial intelligence, it suggests that classical symbolic AI and standard statistical NLP may be fundamentally limited because they are based on classical logic. We are pioneering the development of 'Quantum Natural Language Processing' (QNLP) algorithms that run on quantum simulators and, in the future, quantum hardware. These algorithms promise more human-like ambiguity resolution, metaphor understanding, and creative conceptual blending. On a philosophical level, this research revitalizes the question of the relationship between language, reality, and consciousness. If the deepest structure of language exhibits quantum-like properties, does it point to a quantum-informational substrate for consciousness itself? Or does it simply mean that the brain, as a biological quantum-adjacent system, naturally computes meaning in a quantum-like way? The Institute's collaboration creates a daring new frontier, suggesting that the key to understanding the fluid, creative, and mysterious nature of human language may lie not in grammar books, but in the mathematics of the subatomic world.