--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozg...@...> wrote: > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@> wrote: > > > >> TurquoiseB wrote: <snip> > >>> If you want an unambiguous language, choose French. > >>> That is why all international treaties use it as > >>> the ¨master language¨ for the treaties. There is > >>> a copy in the language of each country, but the > >>> master is in French, because it is so precise. > >>> Everything I´ve ever heard about Sanskrit presents > >>> it as just the opposite. > >>> > >>> Card or others can correct me on this if I´ve heard > >>> incorrectly. I´m not trying to knock Sanskrit or > >>> anything; it´s just that Bhairitu´s claim sounds > >>> the opposite of everything I´ve ever heard about > >>> the nature of Sanskrit as a language. > >>> > >> Here: > >> http://americansanskrit.com/read/a_techage.php > >> > >> Guess maybe you forgot that article you must have > >> read in AI Magazine back in 1985. :-D > >> Those NASA folks must be real TB'ers.
Here's the complete Briggs NASA article: http://www.gosai.com/science/sanskrit-nasa.html This is also a pro-Sanskrit site, but it reproduces the original article rather than paraphrasing it, and there appears to be much less in the way of TB-stuff in it (I haven't read it, just cast an eye over it). Here's the abstract: In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing. These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old. <snip> > > Dig up an article or two that talks > > specifically about the ¨unambiguous nature¨ of > > Sanskrit and post them and then I´ll believe that > > you´re not clinging to True Believer ideas. The Briggs article seems to be the seminal one of this kind. <snip> > Again, I've studied the language, you haven't. It > is like you are reviewing a movie you haven't > actually seen. <snicker>
