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From: dr@tovna.co.il (Daniel Radzinski)
Subject: Re: Definiton for NL & NLP
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Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 12:52:22 GMT
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Michael Covington (mcovingt@ai.uga.edu) wrote:
: Dan Melamed (melamed@unagi.cis.upenn.edu) wrote:
: : >Michael Covington (mcovingt@ai.uga.edu) wrote:
: : >
: : >: "Natural language" simply means an ordinary human language, not an
: : >                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
: : >: artificial language made up for special purposes.  That is, it means
: : >: things like English, French, Hindi, Kwakiutl, etc., not Fortran,
: : >: BASIC, Pascal, or symbolic logic.
: : >
: : >: (Nothing subtle is being said about "naturalness" here.  All we mean
: : >: is that it's not an artificial, consciously-made-up language.)

: : So would you say that Esperanto does not count as a natural language?
: : True, its uniformity and lack of exceptions was different from all
: : other human languages, but it was made up and only used by people
: : nonetheless.  I don't know whether it had any "special purpose."

: Esperanto is in between, obviously.
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

: --
: < Michael A. Covington, Assc Rsch Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Center >
: < The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7415 USA  mcovingt@ai.uga.edu >
: < Unless specifically indicated, I am not speaking for the University. >  <><


BTW, I am told there are roughly some seventy native speakers of Esperanto
alive. Though none are monolingual, they ARE nevertheless native speakers born
to parents who communicate in Esperanto with each other. This makes the
language quite natural. After all, a language may change its status. Consider
the transformation of Hebrew from a dead language, i.e. with no native
speakers, to a live one with native speakers (at the turn of this century). I
don't think anyone would claim that Hebrew is not a natural language even
though it was artificially revived to serve as an ordinary human language.


--
Daniel Radzinski
Tovna Translation Machines
Jerusalem, Israel
dr@tovna.co.il
