Re: Universal grammar

In article <1161142005.979456.53400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Are you saying you want to look up what was said about linguistic
universals to give you new ideas for constructing computer languages?

The original question was actually about linguistic grammar universals,
not language universals. I looked up Joseph Greenberg, and he seems to
have been into language classification, rather than finding a universal
grammar theory. So I suspect, though interesting, it might not be useful.

As for the computer application, programs like Flex/Bison might be worked
up to handle natural language ambiguities. I do not think of it as an
input for creating computer languages. But there might be some interesting
connections:

I write on a theorem prover. And as pure mathematicians do no agree on
notation, I build it up around certain semantic constructs, which the
parser can translate into. It then does not matter exactly what the input
language is, if only the parser is set right. And one can write out in
different notation, if one has the opposite of the parser, called
"expresser" perhaps.

The idea of a classification of the tenses contains (perhaps) the
rudiments of similar ideas.

--
Hans Aberg
.

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