Editing Denotation (section)

{{short description|Literal meaning of an expression}}
In [[linguistics]] and [[philosophy]],<ref>On the history of the concept see Umberto Eco, "Signification and Denotation from Boethius to Ockham", ''Franciscan Studies'', Volume 44, 1984, pp. 1-29.</ref> the '''denotation''' of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the [[English language|English]] word "warm" denotes the [[Property (philosophy)|property]] of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including ''[[connotation]]''. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness, coziness, or kindness (as in the warmth of someone's personality) but these [[association (psychology)|associations]] are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from [[pragmatics|pragmatic]] inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often [[implicature|implicates]] that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.

Denotation plays a major role in several fields. Within [[semantics]] and [[philosophy of language]], denotation is studied as an important aspect of [[Meaning (philosophy)|meaning]]. In [[mathematics]] and [[computer science]], assignments of denotations are assigned to expressions are a crucial step in defining interpreted [[formal language]]s. The main task of [[formal semantics (natural language)|formal semantics]] is to reverse engineer the computational system which assigns denotations to expressions of [[natural language]]s.