Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/28

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Subject: RE: [Leica] XXX of the YYY? WAS (something else) (fwd)
From: Daniel Ridings <daniel.ridings@muspro.uio.no>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:03:15 +0100 (MET)
References: <BCEKKGNGDPMOIPMEJONBMEIIDDAA.phong@doan-ltd.com>

> Hello Daniel,
>
> > Turing machines are finite state machines
>
> Technically they are not (they have infinite storage).
> Ironically, it could be argued that "natural language" is
> finite in that every word ever spoken by anyone since the
> beginning of time is a finite number, and if you bound
> their existence in time (i.e., the species will cease
> to exist one day), natural language is finite, and therefore
> is a finite state machine.  :-)

But ... :) the possibilities (speaking of the future and not the only the
past) is infinite. That's where the "generative" approach came it (it
would generate _all and only_ grammatically correct "sentences".

Still fascinating goal. If nothing else he has made it perfectly clear
that no one has every produced a grammar to describe properly any natural
language.  And he's pointed out what such a grammar will have to do to
succeed.

Problem is that grammar is not very important for natural language. It
doesn't take into account semantics (meaning).

> I agree with you though on the little impact Chomsky's
> work has made in natural language, as opposed to formal
> language.

He would be very sad to hear that :)

Hope you still have a day off! (and enjoy it in that case)

Daniel

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In reply to: Message from "Phong" <phong@doan-ltd.com> (RE: [Leica] XXX of the YYY? WAS (something else) (fwd))