--- On Thu, 10/23/08, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi. I don't understand the following > statements. Could you explain it some more? > >> - Natural language can be learned from examples. Formal language >> can not.
I really mean that formal languages like C++ and HTML are not designed to be learned by the machines that implement them. We write a formal specification of their syntax and semantics. Obviously they are learnable by humans in the same way that humans learn natural languages -- by generalizing from lots of examples. Formal languages serve as a bridge between humans and machines. As such, a language is designed as a compromise between ease of machine specification and ease of human learnability. >> - Formal language must be parsed before it can be understood. Natural >> language must be understood before it can be parsed. In formal languages, the meaning of sentence depends heavily on its parse, for example: a = b - c; // a comment b = c - a; // a comment // a - b = c; a comment In natural language, a parse depends greatly on the meanings of the words. For example: - I ate pizza with chopsticks. - I ate pizza with pepperoni. - I ate pizza with Bob. But word order has only a small effect on meaning: - With Bob I ate pizza. - I with Bob ate pizza. - Pizza Bob I ate with. This is my objection to using formal languages to train AGI in a childhood development model like OpenCog (artificial toddler, child, adult, scientist). A child would be trained on single words with semantic content like "pizza". Then an adult would learn increasingly complex grammatical structures. Only at the scientist level would an AGI be capable of learning formal languages. There really isn't any stage where a "clean" language like Lojban or Esperanto seems to help much with knowledge acquisition. If it did, then we would be teaching it in our schools. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
