Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!briggs@RIACS.ARPA 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 BriggsSergia 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