Re: Sim Conlang (Re: When is plural applied?)

--- David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...> wrote:
> Gary wrote:
>
> <<What we need is something like "Sim City", a
> computer
> program that could be programmed to simulate a bunch
> of little people running around speaking our conlang
> so we could watch evolve for a few simulated
> centuries. ;-)>>
>
> You have NO idea how many times I've envisioned
> exactly this!!!   To me, it'd
> almost be like there were levels.   You'd enter a
> certain amount of words and
> morphological info then hit "start", and the level
> would start.   There'd be
> a bunch of people (e.g., someone buying food from a
> shop, the store keeper, a
> policeman, a woman trying to park her car,
> passersby, a guy at a magazine
> stand, etc.), and they'd just kind of act randomly
> and try to interact.   The
> second there was a problem (i.e., they'd try to
> interact, but couldn't, based on
> the input), one of two things would happen: (1)
> they'd inovate something, and a
> log would record the inovation, or (2) if it was too
> serious, the level would
> stop (i.e., you'd lose), and you'd be told exactly
> what went wrong.   That
> would be AWESOME!!!   I would pay twice the
> suggested retail price for it.   I
> wish I were rich, computer-brilliant, and had
> nothing else to do: I'd get right
> on this.`
>
Considering the difficulty of doing ANY kind of
natural language processing by computer (from machine
"understanding" to machine translation) I'm afraid
this is a project that is beyond the reach of current
technology.  At best it would have to use some very
stylized "grammar" and rigidly constrained set of
things that could be talked about.  That wouldn't
leave much room for any kind of innovation or
naturalistic evolution, especially since the
programmer would have to pretty much pre-plan any
evolutionary steps that were to take place, and that
defeats the whole purpose.

Too bad.  It would be a fun little toy to play around
with.

--gary

> -David
>
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