It’s just about duck typing. On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 20:39, Hauke Rehr <[email protected]> wrote:
> The “same thing” is language. > Why do we have the words “men” and “women”, they’re humans. > You can always partition a set and label the subsets. > This was done here. But it was done using a guide. > As soon as you have a way to tell them apart, they > are “different things” even if there’s a common > superset that already has a meaningful name. > > I think it’s just an empirical notion (as is biological sex). > An attempt: > Has this language been invented, constructed, crafted? > Call it artificial. (So Erlang ends up here.) > Else: > Has any human ever grown up speaking (voice) that language? > Call it natural. > Else: Can it be called a language at all? > (This question is not raised with humans. > If anyone is found to neither be man nor woman > nor hermaphrodite, we’ll make up a new name.) > > But they’re helpful concepts even if there is no fixed set of > rules for determining which set any given language belongs to. > Or so do I think. > > If you want to talk about all of them, talk about language. > > > > On a sidenote, there are people who want to tell them apart > by asking if there are lies, if there are jokes, if there > is irony or sarcasm and the like. I think they miss the point. > That would at best assert some development status of a language. > > > > But this is now far from a J topic so I’d say let’s > continue this discussion privately if at all. > > > > Am 17.01.21 um 17:26 schrieb Justin Paston-Cooper: > > I just believe that what we call artificial and natural language are a > > manifestation of the same thing. Of course we can make distinctions > > between both, talk about each separately and possibly reach agreement. > > You could probably apply what you said about natural language to > > untyped actor languages like Erlang. > > > > On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 19:09, Hauke Rehr <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> I’ve been talking about languages known to me. > >> Yes, there was induction when I generalized. > >> Yes, this might not be logically justified. > >> You knew all of this. > >> > >> You, too, use all these fuzzy words all the time > >> even though you have never been told a rigorous definition. > >> And we don’t need them. We understand each other without > >> analyzing sentences and remembering definitions. > >> > >> cf L. Wittgenstein > >> (I already thought about mentioning his Sprachspiele > >> in my last post) > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Concerning your questions: > >> Those crafted by humans can: They’re known to be artificial. > >> (so Esperanto and Volapük are artificial) > >> Those that seem to historically have developed by routine > >> everyday communication by everyone in a society are at least > >> said to be natural. So that’s what natural means. It’s just > >> the word we use for those languages. > >> (maybe you can find better characteristics but I guess you > >> know what I am talking about) > >> But for any language unknown yet: > >> I don’t think so. But I don’t think it matters at all. > >> > >> > >> Am 17.01.21 um 16:49 schrieb Justin Paston-Cooper: > >>> 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 > >>> > >> > >> -- > >> ---------------------- > >> 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 > > > > -- > ---------------------- > 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
