Hi Mark
There are no risks in meta meta land except not being perfectly clear.
metalanguage |ˈmetəˌla ng (g)wij| |ˌmɛdəˈløŋgwɪdʒ| |
ˌmɛtəlaŋgwɪdʒ|
noun
a form of language or set of terms used for the description or
analysis of another language. Compare with object language (sense 1).
• Logic a system of propositions about propositions.
You assert that the term <English Language> is fine because you could
substitute other languages in its place in translation.
This is not the same as my suggestion to make a general statement
It is somewhat analogous to saying you and me have something in
common when all we mean is that all people have some things in common.
I am not trying for abstraction.
In a metalanguage for J, there should be a controlled vocabulary with
sufficient words to express any technical sentence about J.
Words should be clear, simple and easily recognized. You should
choose one word for one meaning. In this way the metalanguage can be
learned and used effectively by the speakers of any language, tho
they may initially need a translation.
Later in the suggested revised post I do include the reason for
choosing the terms that have analogous meaning in English using
mostly the same wording as the original text.
To summarize I suggest:
1. stating what it is that all languages have in common rather than
what J has in common with English.
2. make a distinction between the object language J and the meta
language (possibly referred to as J terms since that was already in
the text).
If these things are set out carefully it can improve discussions in
all the forums because people will use the same simple meta language
to describe J. It can improve programming specs for upgrading and
maintaining J. It can improve the learning curve. Otherwise we can
have interesting conversations trying to figure out what one another
means.
Donna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 30-Jun-06, at 3:09 AM, Mark D. Niemiec wrote:
dly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The statement:
All programming languages have things in common with the English
language.
seems unnecessarily Anglo-centric. The balance of the text makes
no distinction between the programming language J and the
metalanguage J terms used to describe it. This could present
difficulty for a student of J who might prefer a metalanguage
description of J to be translated into their own language. I would
suggest
To risk veering further and further off in to meta meta-land:
Think of the word 'English', not as an absolute term, but as a
context-relative one.
Since this document is written in English, it is naturally oriented
towards
English-speaking readers. A French translation would translate
this word into 'Francais' rather than 'Anglais'.
Or, if you find this insufficiently abstract, you could render it as
'Human language' (or, if you care to extend the analogy to
other sentient species, 'Natural language')
All languages have elements in common such as the component symbols,
words or terms that have defined meaning and the rules of syntax or
grammar that tell you how to combine the words into sentences to
communicate.
Languages have such elements in common, but they may assign different
names to them. J tends to use English (see note above) terms to these,
to strengthen the analogy to human languages, as opposed to machine
languages.
I came to J from APL, which used more conventional programming terms.
I found the English terminology helped to make the J syntax model much
easier to learn and comprehend.
-- Mark D. Niemiec <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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