Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sdamos.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdamos!elman From: elman@sdamos.UUCP (Jeff Elman) Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Re: Sanskrit Message-ID: <17@sdamos.UUCP> Date: Wed, 3-Oct-84 15:57:24 EDT Article-I.D.: sdamos.17 Posted: Wed Oct 3 15:57:24 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 07:55:09 EDT References: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: Phonetics Lab, UC San Diego Lines: 73 Rick, I am very skeptical about your claims that Sastric Sanskrit is an unambiguous language. I also feel you misunderstand the nature and consequences of ambiguity in natural human language. | 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. Your judgment is probably based on written sources. The sources may also be technical texts. All this indicates is that it was possible to write in Sastric Sanskrit with a minimum of ambiguity. So what? Most languages allow utterances which have no ambiguity. Read a mathematics text. |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. I think you have fallen victim to the trap of the egocentrism. English is not particularly less (or more) effective than other languages as a vehicle for communicating logical data, although it may seem that way to a native monolingual speaker. | 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. How do you know how easily they communicated? I'm serious. And how easily do you read a text on partial differential equations? An utterance which is structurally ambiguous may not be the easiest to read. |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. Here we come to an important point. You assume that the ambiguity of natural languages results in loss of clarity. I would argue that in most cases the structural ambiguity in utterances is resolved by other (linguistic or paralinguistic) means. Meaning is determined by a complex interaction of factors, of which surface structure is but one. Surface ambiguity gives the language a flexibility of expression. That flexibility does not necessarily entail lack of clarity. Automatic (machine-based) parers, on the other hand, have a very difficult time taking all the necessary interactions into account and so must rely more heavily on a reliable mapping of surface to base structure. | 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. Oops! Languages may have (relatively) free word order and still have syntax. A language without syntax would be the linguistic find of the century! In any event, the principal point I would like to make is that structural ambiguity is not particularly bad nor incompatible with "logical" expression. Human speech recognizers have a variety of means for dealing with ambiguity. In fact, my guess is we do better at understanding languages which use ambiguity than languages which exclude it. Jeff Elman Phonetics Lab, Dept. of Linguistics, C-008 Univ. of Calif., San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093 (619) 452-2536, (619) 452-3600 UUCP: ...ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdamos!elman ARPAnet: elman@nprdc.ARPA