Re: [lojban] Re: Regular Language

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2011 at 05:32:48PM -0700, Graham Morehead wrote:
> 
> > > (like all other human languages).  
> >
> > Wait, what?  No.  No human language is context free, they are
> > all context sensitive in the chomsky hieararchy, if not actually
> > unrestricted.
> >  Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar#Linguistic_applicat...
> > for some citations on that issue.
> >
> > I'm wondering if you didn't mean CFG when you said regular
> > language and CSG when you said CFG?
> 
> I've seen papers about those examples before.  I still believe
> human languages are Context-Free.  The cross-serial dependencies
> in Swiss German (and Dutch, I think) and reduplication in Bambara
> can be modeled in a CFG if we assume sentences of some given
> finite length or less.  No human can understand a sentence of
> infinite length anyway.
> 
> There is evidence that all human knowledge is stored in formations
> constructed by context-free graph grammars (e.g.:
> http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10687.full )

That's fascinating, because people seem to have no problem
internalizing Lojban's elidable terminators, which as I'd said don't
seem to be CFG-able (at least in a sane number of rules).

-Robin

-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei".   My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.