Re: Universal grammar


Hans Aberg wrote:

I think the Babylonians also knew how to solve second degree polynomial
equations, but only empirically, as a set of instructions for finding the
answer.

Yes, they might have done that. Some cases are easy.
For example aa plus 4 equals 4a. Try 1 for a, and you get
5 versus 4. Try 2, and you get 8 and 8. Bingo. They might
even have found some clever strategies for tackling more
demanding cases.

Back to language. What do you think of Rob Freeman's
approach of a grammr based on examples instead of rules?
I find it promising. That is the way I proceed in English.
I don't consult grammar books, I rely on songlines and
sentences I remember. Prepositions are a problem of mine:
in the airplane? on the airplane? on an island? in an island?
Dictionaries offer some examples, but never enough for me,
so I began to google the groups for the correct use of
prepositions, for correct grammar, also for slang words
I find nowhere else. A billion of messages are my grammer
book and dictionary. Examples instead of rules.

I wished there was something similar for mathematical
purposes, an easily searchable electronic library of numbers
and number sequences, together with the algorithms that
produce them. Euler's memory for everybody, so to say.

Tools don't replace the human hand, they prolong the arm.
Computers don't replace the human brain, the enlarge the mind.

Regards Franz Gnaedinger

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