Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!briggs@RIACS.ARPA From: briggs@RIACS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Sanskrit Message-ID: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 19:01:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12582 Posted: Mon Oct 1 19:01:00 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 07:53:18 EDT Lines: 70 From: Rick BriggsIn response to the flood of messages I recieved concerning the ambiguity-free natural language, here is some more information about it. The language is a branch of Sastric Sanskrit which flourished between the 4th century B.C and 4th century A.D., although its beginnings are somewhat older. That it is unambiguous is without question. (I am writing two papers, one for laymen and one for those with AI background). A more interesting question is one posed by Dr. Michael Dyer, that is "is it a natural language?". The answer is yes, it is natural and it is unambiguous. It would be difficult to call a language living and spoken for over a millenium with as rich a literature as this langauge has anything but a natural language. The problem is that most (maybe all) of us are used to languages like English (one of the worst) or other languages which are so poor as vehicles of transmission of logical data. We have assumed that since all languages known have ambiguity, that it is a necessary property of natural languages, but there is no reason to make this assumption. The complaint that it is awkward to speak with the precision required to rule out ambiguity is one based on (I would guess) the properties of Engish or other common Indo-European languages. If one were to take a specific formulation such as a semantic net and "read" it in English the result is a cumbersome mass of detail which nobody would be willing to use in ordinary communication. However, if one were to take that same semantic net and translate it into the language I am studying you get (probably) one very long word with a series of affixes which convey very compactly the actual meaning of the semantic net. In other words, translations from this language to English are of the same nature as those from a semantic net to English (hence the equivalence to semantic nets), one compact structure to a long paragraph. The facility and ease with which these Indians communicated indicates that it is possible for a natural language to serve all purposes of artificial languages based on logic. If one could say what one wishes to say with absolute clarity (although with apparent redundancy) in the same time and with the same ease as you say part of what you mean in English, why not do so? And if a population actually got used to talking in this way there would be much more clarity and less confusion in our communication. Sastric Sanskrit allows you to say WHAT YOU MEAN without effort. The questions "Can you elaborate on that?" or "What exactly are you trying to say?" would simply not come up unless the hearer wished to go to a deeper level of detail. This language was used in much the same way as language found in technical journals today. Scientists would communicate orally and in writing in this language. It is certainly a natural language. As to how this is accomplished, basically SYNTAX IS ELIMINATED. Word order is unimportant, speaking is thus comparable to adding a series of facts to a data-base. What interests me about this language is: 1) Many theories derived recently in Linguistics and AI were independently in use over a thousand years ago, without computers or any need to eliminate ambiguity except for precise thinking and communication 2) A natural language can serve as a mathematical (or artificial language) and thus the dichotomy between the two is false. 3) There are methods for translating "regular" Sanskrit into Sastric Sanskrit from which much could be learned from NLP research. 4) The possibilities of this language serving as interlingua for MT. There are no translated texts and it takes Sanskrit experts a very long time to analyze the texts, so a translation of a full work in this language is a way off. However, those interested can get a hold of "Vaiyakarana-Siddhanta-Laghu-Manjusa" by Nagesha Bhatta. Rick Briggs NASA Ames