- From: James David Mason <masonjd@ornl.gov>
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:36:37 -0400
- To: lee@sq.com
- Cc: Charles@sgmlsource.com, w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 11:34 PM 10/10/96 EDT, lee@sq.com wrote: > >Nouns are different from verbs, but they are not distinguished lexically in >English. In Sanskrit and Ancient Greek and Latin they are distinguished by >endings; morphological tagging has tended to weaken with time, however, so >that languages are getting less complex in this regard. While morphological distinctions in IE languages have tended to decrease with time, there have been compensating syantactic effects. Languages like English (only two morphological noun cases, down from four plus remnants of another in Anglo Saxon) or French (only one noun case, down from seven in Latin) tend to have developed very strongly positional syntax that their ancestors did not need. >In programming languages, consider > process(w) >where w may be an integer or a string, but the same syntax is used. > >This uniform syntax is VERY highly prized in computer science. > Another reason why those of us trained as natural-language find programming languages so unnatural. Jim Mason Dr. James D. Mason (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 Convenor) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Information Management Services SGML Systems Development 1060 Commerce Park, M.S. 6480 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6480 U.S.A. Telephone: +1 423 574-6973 Facsimile: +1 423 574-0004 Network: masonjd@ornl.gov
Received on Friday, 11 October 1996 09:37:06 UTC