tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 06 20:48:15 1993
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Re: House languages
About a program to generate a language....
Please keep in mind that this is the first time I have even concidered
such a program. I am not sure if it would require the purposeful
implementation of neural nets. The point about the language being it's own
ideas and not those of the person who wrote the program seems to be
a valid point.
Before I go any further, let me say that I am currently employed as a
software engineer, and have been for the past 5 years.
Not that that will add any validity to my ideas, it just was ment to add
some background so you can see where these ideas may have come from.
If well written, possibly to use something like a LALR or BNF (For those
of you who do not find enjoyment in reading about the writing of compilers,
those are notations used to define the grammer of a computer language, so that
a program like YACC and LEX can generate programs that will check the
syntax of a computer language that you are creating) to define the grammar
rules and rules for constructing vocabularies, and verb conjugations.
Irregularities could even be programmed in by the well versed language
designer, but such a progeram would most likely produce a language that
would strictly follow the grammer rules presented by the designer of the
language. One of the largest problems with a program of this type would
be allowing it to generate languages like Greek that have many words that
mean "Love", or Hawiian (pardon the spelling) that has the word Aloha that
has many meanings. There is also the concideration of, again I think from
greek, of creating verb tenses that are not normally in English. This could
be beaten by the possibly creating a number of tense "directions" or "states"
like past, future, conditional, vague, with levels from, say, 0 to 10.
You could then create a special tense that represents an uncertian vague
event in the recent past, as opposed to an uncertian vague event in the distant past.
There is also the problem of entering your current language (just words and
unconjugated verbs) and classifying them so the computer can generate the
translated words for the new language. As the english language is very
large, this would be a great accomplishment in itself. Then you have to
allow for the computer to keep it;s generated language so that new words could
be added to the language in the event that someone events the "thwickie" the
latest in computer pointing devices, and you want your language to have a
unique word and not borrow from the english.
As you have figured out by now, I tend to type as I think. Letting the words
appear on the screen as they materialize in my thoughts. Though this results in
a strange, and rambling posting, I prefer it, as it seems to keep the
conversation feel to the stream of discussion. For me to prepare a long, and
gramatically correct, statement, with all details thought out would be
pretentious. Honesty would not allow be to conduct such a charade, now would
(sorry delete the last 2 words) nor would those on this list who know me.
Forgive my ramblings, I hope I have made my points clearly.
Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts.
Magick