information sciencen
the study of the generation, organization, communication and use of
information. Information science is interdisciplinary and draws on work in
linguistics, engineering, computer science, physics, communications, etc.
information structuren
the use of word order, intonation, stressand other devices to indicate
how the message expressed by a sentence is to be understood.
Information structure is communicated by devices which indicate such
things as:
awhich parts of the message the speaker assumes the hearer already
knows and which parts of the message are new information (see func-
tional sentence perspective)
bcontrasts, which may be indicated by stressing one word and not another
(e.g. I broke MYpen; I broke my PEN; I BROKEmy pen).
see also grounding
information technologyn
also IT
a broad term referring to any aspect of computers or technology.
information theoryn
also communication theory
any theory that explains how communication systems carry information
and which measures the amount of information according to how much
choice is involved when we send information. One well-known model (that
of Shannon and Weaver) describes communication as a process consisting
of the following elements. The information source(e.g. a speaker) selects
a desired message out of a possible set of messages. The “transmitter”
changes the messages into a signalwhich is sent over the communication
channel (e.g. a telephone wire) where it is received by the receiver (e.g. a
telephone or earphones) and changed back into a message which is sent to
the “destination” (e.g. a listener). In the process of transmission certain
unwanted additions to the signal may occur which are not part of the
message (e.g. interference from a poor telephone line) and these are referred
to as noise^2. The information content of a unit (e.g. of a word or a sentence)
is measured according to how likely it is to occur in a particular communica-
tion. The more predictable a unit is, the less information it is said to
carry. The unit of information used in information theory is the “binary
digit”, or “bit”. The related concept of redundancyrefers to the degree
to which a message contains more information than is needed for it to be
understood.
Information theory