The “same thing” is language. Why do we have the words “men” and “women”, they’re humans. You can always partition a set and label the subsets. This was done here. But it was done using a guide. As soon as you have a way to tell them apart, they are “different things” even if there’s a common superset that already has a meaningful name.
I think it’s just an empirical notion (as is biological sex). An attempt: Has this language been invented, constructed, crafted? Call it artificial. (So Erlang ends up here.) Else: Has any human ever grown up speaking (voice) that language? Call it natural. Else: Can it be called a language at all? (This question is not raised with humans. If anyone is found to neither be man nor woman nor hermaphrodite, we’ll make up a new name.) But they’re helpful concepts even if there is no fixed set of rules for determining which set any given language belongs to. Or so do I think. If you want to talk about all of them, talk about language. On a sidenote, there are people who want to tell them apart by asking if there are lies, if there are jokes, if there is irony or sarcasm and the like. I think they miss the point. That would at best assert some development status of a language. But this is now far from a J topic so I’d say let’s continue this discussion privately if at all. Am 17.01.21 um 17:26 schrieb Justin Paston-Cooper: > I just believe that what we call artificial and natural language are a > manifestation of the same thing. Of course we can make distinctions > between both, talk about each separately and possibly reach agreement. > You could probably apply what you said about natural language to > untyped actor languages like Erlang. > > On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 19:09, Hauke Rehr <hauke.r...@uni-jena.de> wrote: >> >> I’ve been talking about languages known to me. >> Yes, there was induction when I generalized. >> Yes, this might not be logically justified. >> You knew all of this. >> >> You, too, use all these fuzzy words all the time >> even though you have never been told a rigorous definition. >> And we don’t need them. We understand each other without >> analyzing sentences and remembering definitions. >> >> cf L. Wittgenstein >> (I already thought about mentioning his Sprachspiele >> in my last post) >> >> >> >> >> Concerning your questions: >> Those crafted by humans can: They’re known to be artificial. >> (so Esperanto and Volapük are artificial) >> Those that seem to historically have developed by routine >> everyday communication by everyone in a society are at least >> said to be natural. So that’s what natural means. It’s just >> the word we use for those languages. >> (maybe you can find better characteristics but I guess you >> know what I am talking about) >> But for any language unknown yet: >> I don’t think so. But I don’t think it matters at all. >> >> >> Am 17.01.21 um 16:49 schrieb Justin Paston-Cooper: >>> All languages are fixed over a given Planck time. What is it for a language >>> to be artificial or not? Can it be objectively proved either way? >>> >>> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 18:43, Hauke Rehr <hauke.r...@uni-jena.de> wrote: >>> >>>> Natural languages are flexible. Recipients of messages are >>>> forgiving, trying to understand what you meant. >>>> The rules are dynamic and at times even local or personal. >>>> >>>> This is much different from many artificial languages, >>>> in particular from programming languages. >>>> They have one set of fixed rules* (even if they are rules >>>> for declaring rules); the interpreter/compiler can only >>>> be told to handle a list of common mistakes but cannot >>>> intelligently try to understand anything never seen before. >>>> >>>> Therefore I think learning should be at least somewhat different, too. >>>> (And I used to learn even foreign languages by first studying >>>> their grammar, then learning a thesaurus and then applying them, >>>> building hopefully correct sentences. When a Spanish teacher began >>>> talking to us in Spanish from the start, I was overchallenged.) >>>> >>>> * yes, they are evolving – but for any version, they’re fixed >>>> >>>> Am 17.01.21 um 16:27 schrieb Henry Rich: >>>>> It gives them a wrong mental model of rank, which they must unlearn >>>>> later. This can have serious consequences, particularly if they get >>>>> the idea that u"n is 'like u with the rank set to n' (if that were true, >>>>> u"1"_1 would be the same as u"_ 1, which it isn't). >>>>> >>>>> Ken thought you should learn J like you learn a natural language, by >>>>> seeing and saying, and creating your own rules internally. I think he >>>>> was wrong when it comes to verb rank. The idea is so new, and so >>>>> subtle, that users left to themselves get it wrong. I had one very >>>>> bright student who, discovering that (,1) + 1 2 3 gave an error, found >>>>> that +/ would not give an error, and ever after applied / to every >>>>> verb. He created his own rule, you see. >>>>> >>>>> Henry Rich >>>>> >>>>> On 1/17/2021 12:24 AM, Raul Miller wrote: >>>>>> Does it really cost them that much? >>>>>> >>>>>> Given that beginner problems generally do not involve multi-megabytes >>>>>> of data, I mean... >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks, >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> ---------------------- >>>> mail written using NEO >>>> neo-layout.org >>>> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >>>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >>> >> >> -- >> ---------------------- >> mail written using NEO >> neo-layout.org >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- ---------------------- mail written using NEO neo-layout.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
