To recap, 'semantics' is the study of meaning. Humans derive meaning from linguistic symbols by comparing them to their prior experiences. The basic question being "Has this symbol, or a closely associated symbol, been present in the context of a memory I have?" If it is, then we 'understand' the symbol by pulling up the memory or memories tied to it. For most symbols (e.g. apple) there is a rich personal history or experiences we can compare it to.<p>So the mapping here is symbol -> experiences, where experiences are the memories of senses over time.<p>Thus the data structure that will ultimately <i>solve</i> this problem is one that performs <i>that</i> mapping, not one which maps symbols to a necessarily arbitrary and limited other set of symbols (aka category labels and facts).