To recap, 'semantics' is the study of meaning. Humans derive meaning from linguistic symbols by comparing them to their prior experiences. The basic question be

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. So the mapping here is symbol -> experiences, where experiences are the memories of senses over time. Thus the data structure that will ultimately solve this problem is one that performs that mapping, not one which maps symbols to a necessarily arbitrary and limited other set of symbols (aka category labels and facts).