From the perspective of text processing, a proposition is a predicate and a number of arguments that together form an idea or unit of information. For those doing research with text, it was important to distinguish between an idea and the multiple ways of expressing that idea into English or any other language. Decoding natural language into propositions, or a propositional network (complex ideas required that propositions could refer to other propositions in a
tree-like structure of meaning), provided a standardized way of referring to meaning that attempted to minimize variations in language, word choice, or other subtleties of expression.