X-Digest-Num: 66 Message-ID: <44114.66.288.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 17:02:05 -0600 (CST) From: Christopher Palmer Subject: Re: Off Topic: metaphor in programming languages? X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 288 Content-Length: 1647 Lines: 57 On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, xod wrote: > > Not so. Libraries are additions to the 'dictionary' of primitive > > functions; they are lexical, not metaphoric. > > If I say to you "a stitch in time...", you know what I mean. I didn't make > it explicit in my text; it was commonly understood. 'A stitch in time saves nine' (or whatever) is not a metaphor. > If I use a library call to process a JPEG, the reader of the source > code, whether human or compiler, knows what I mean. I didn't make it > explicit in my source; it was commonly understood. If #include isn't explicit, I don't know what is. ;^) Even if it were left implicit, it would not be a metaphoric construction. > Everything is context-independent if your scope is broad enough. That's not true. Context dependence is not necessarily about scope; context dependence speaks to logical form. Take two examples from SPE-era generative phonology (just because it's a clear example): 1. /s/ --> /t/ '/s/ shifts to /t/.' 2. /s/ --> /t/ { [+ cont. -voc.] __ } '/s/ shifts to /t/ after a continuant consonant.' Rule 2 is context-dependent, rule 1 is not. Early theories of syntax (which were originally taken also to be complete theories of language, including semantics) were entirely context-free, which is why they failed in MT, among other applications. Most current mainstream computational linguistics work is still being done in the vein. It's quite sad, really. ---------(( Christopher Reid Palmer : www.pconline.com/~reid/ ))--------- the characters i am, made into a word complete -- Meshuggah