All languages are fixed over a given Planck time. What is it for a language to be artificial or not? Can it be objectively proved either way?
On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 18:43, Hauke Rehr <[email protected]> wrote: > Natural languages are flexible. Recipients of messages are > forgiving, trying to understand what you meant. > The rules are dynamic and at times even local or personal. > > This is much different from many artificial languages, > in particular from programming languages. > They have one set of fixed rules* (even if they are rules > for declaring rules); the interpreter/compiler can only > be told to handle a list of common mistakes but cannot > intelligently try to understand anything never seen before. > > Therefore I think learning should be at least somewhat different, too. > (And I used to learn even foreign languages by first studying > their grammar, then learning a thesaurus and then applying them, > building hopefully correct sentences. When a Spanish teacher began > talking to us in Spanish from the start, I was overchallenged.) > > * yes, they are evolving – but for any version, they’re fixed > > Am 17.01.21 um 16:27 schrieb Henry Rich: > > It gives them a wrong mental model of rank, which they must unlearn > > later. This can have serious consequences, particularly if they get > > the idea that u"n is 'like u with the rank set to n' (if that were true, > > u"1"_1 would be the same as u"_ 1, which it isn't). > > > > Ken thought you should learn J like you learn a natural language, by > > seeing and saying, and creating your own rules internally. I think he > > was wrong when it comes to verb rank. The idea is so new, and so > > subtle, that users left to themselves get it wrong. I had one very > > bright student who, discovering that (,1) + 1 2 3 gave an error, found > > that +/ would not give an error, and ever after applied / to every > > verb. He created his own rule, you see. > > > > Henry Rich > > > > On 1/17/2021 12:24 AM, Raul Miller wrote: > >> Does it really cost them that much? > >> > >> Given that beginner problems generally do not involve multi-megabytes > >> of data, I mean... > >> > >> Thanks, > >> > > > > > > -- > ---------------------- > mail written using NEO > neo-layout.org > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
