Re: CHAT: programming langs

>Status: R
>
>Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>
>> I don't want speech recognition! I want handwriting recognition,
>> in any script!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Charles>
>
>Whether input is from mouse or keyboard or speech or email,
>it must be text at some point. I used to do GUIs as emitters
>of text to an underlying text parser, so command files and
>"macros" and rational testing were easy to do. That way,
>there are many possible front-ends channeled into a single
>uniform input stream. GUI, keyboard, speech, whatever:
>nobody gets excluded, all get to the same functions.
>
>But then what is the underlying, ultimate generic "language"?
I'm reading my new copy of Wierzbicka's semantics book and she supposes
a small closed set of less than 100 concepts that are universally found
in spoken language. I suppose the same set will be found in the
semantic assembly language of the function set that your computer
inputs funnel to.  She is also working on a minimalist universal
grammar, all empirically based. I'm putting the Wierzbickas into
Nilenga-NGL and translating the tenses into vector tense.

>The two modes I can think of are "imperative" as in Perl/Python/etc,
>or "declarative" as in Prolog and backward-chaining logic systems.
Perhaps we can describe the languages as more or less deterministic.
The desiderative would be then much less deterministic, it seems that
such a language would be capable of writing itself to reach a goal.
Just as "the wish is the father of the deed", such a desiderative
language would have to be capable of self-programming.  I seem to be
getting into one of those never never lands of artificial intelligence,
and making no progress also. Statistics, chaos theory, attractors, huge
databases, would seem to have to be parts of such capability.

The trend of modeling the computer on its creator continues. Perhaps
simple life forms will indwell in future computers to serve as
"motivators" or "wanters". Like dog and master they will function as a
team. I'd better stop here before even conculturalists start to wonder
at my sanity.

Gerald Koenig

>I think we need a new "desiderative" mode, whatever that may mean.
>It appears to me now that syntax and morphology are no problem,
>rather it (the mystery) is all in the semantics.
>
>--
>As they say in Tepa: hike waipettu.
>