Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: smryan@netcom.com (Pastor Rod Flash)
Subject: Re: World Language?
Message-ID: <smryanD6IyBM.95B@netcom.com>
Organization: The Blinding Light Crusade
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Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 19:04:34 GMT
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: I am wondering if such a language for speech has been developed.

It is unlikely that any such language will replace natural
languages. Syntactically, the human brain appears to use a
very different parser than a computer. Computer languages
generaly very precise delimiters, while natural languages
are a bit sloppier. Computer languages have deeply nested
constructs. Computer and natural languages use redundancies
in different ways.

Natural languages apparently use semantic information to
deal with syntactic ambiguities.

Semantically, computer languages are restricted to predetermined
semantic domain. Natural languages appear to be self
adapting. Natural languages not permit, but in some
social circumstances, encourage ambiguity.

What is has happenned is the invention of sublanguages such
as Fortran or mathematical notation which is restricted to
a specific domain of human discourse. The restriction makes 
it more efficient and less ambiguous.

My personal opinion is if you lift sublanguages out of their
restricted domain, they will become as inefficient and
ambiguous as the language you attempt to replace, because
that is the nature of the human brain/mind.


: ^  Few people dare to make fun of FORTRAN, and probably none really

Jim Backus is attributed with 'I don't know what language
they're going to be using in 2000, but it's going to be
called Fortran.'
-- 
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