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From: briggs@RIACS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: natural languages as interlinguas for MT
Message-ID: <12455@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Sep-84 12:33:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12455
Posted: Wed Sep 26 12:33:00 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 04:49:08 EDT
Lines: 20

From:  Rick Briggs 

        Sergia Nirenburg's statement that "a natural language and an
MT interlingua have different purposes and are designed differently"
is false and reveals an incorrect premise underlying much linguistic and
AI research.  There is a natural language which was spoken between
1000 B.C. and 1900 A.D. which was used amongst a scientific community,
and which was ambiguity free(in some senses syntax-free) and which
fascilitated automatic inference.  Instead of saying "John gave Mary
a book" these scientists would say "there was a giving event, having as
agent John, who is qualified by singularity...etc".
        I have shown this well-developed system to be equivalent to
certain semantic net systems, and in some cases the ancient language
is even more specific.
        The language is an obscure branch of Indo-Iranian of which there
are no translations, but the originals are extant.
        Natural languages CAN serve as interlingua.

Rick Briggs
briggs@riacs