paraphrase (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS for the result or process of producing alternative versions of a SENTENCE or TEXT without changing the MEANING. One SENTENCE may have several paraphrases, e.g. The dog is eating a bone, A bone is being eaten by the dog, It’s the dog who is eating a bone, and so on. Most SEMANTIC theories would treat all these sentences as having a single semantic REPRESENTATION (though variations in FOCUS and PRESUPPOSITION could differentiate them). Linguists use syntactic paraphrase as a major procedure for establishing certain types of TRANSFORMATIONAL relations.