Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!caen!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Language and grammar
References: <3hliff$g4f@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
Reply-To: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27
Lines: 32
X-Posting-Host: chatham.demon.co.uk
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 17:50:36 +0000
Message-ID: <792697836snz@chatham.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk

"Grammar" gets used to mean lots of things, which is as it should be. 
Dr Rickert makes some sound points, which I shall not presume to paraphrase.

Ex ante, a grammar has chunks and an operating system. The chunks can be 
connected up in a large - but limited - number of ways and the operating system 
does stuff with them, primarily transforming them into other strings of chunks. 
Each chunk has properties, in the manner of good objects everywhere, and these 
are describable in terms of strings of other chunks, tied together in ways 
which the operating system can use.

One really interesting question is whether the operating system can be entirely 
described by the chunks that it manipulates. If the operating system (and its 
implicit rules) are describable by the chunks and the chunks are decribable by 
all of the other chunks, arranged in pleasing patterns, then we have a self-
contained system to please the heart of even a Kurt Godel. Pascal won't do (for 
alll sort of reasons!) but in this instance, because it has an invented grammar 
which required humans to build it. A self-assembled grammar is what we are 
after: one which has knitted itself together and is the sum of what it does. 
Such a beast would be able to operate on itself, changing its own rules.

We see one such grammar all around us, in the living world. The forest is the 
sum of the interactions which make up the forest - and damn the atoms which 
underpin all of what is going on. The bat has evolved to drink from the flower 
and the flower, to dust the bat with pollen: co-evolved, a grammar which parses 
long and complex sentences which we chop down and make into sushi sticks. 
Another such grammar is awareness, perhaps?


 _________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
