Re: Does natural language skill translate to programming skill?


Ar an dara lá déag de mí Márta, scríobh LEE Sau Dan:

> Aidan Kehoe wrote:
>> I’m not aware of any natural language processing applications
>> written in Prolog or Lisp that have served a useful purpose
>> beyond a) absorbing research grant money or b) proving that
>> Prolog, Lisp and traditional computational linguistics
>> approaches are ill-suited to natural language processing.

Helmut> About 1987 I supervised a student, who did his diploma
Helmut> thesis on "application of conceptual graphs". His program
Helmut> written in Prolog was able to read in laws, and a user
Helmut> could enter an individual problem (case) related to this
Helmut> law, and the program solved the problem. The results were
Helmut> impressive. But it is easier to parse German texts than
Helmut> English ones.

Aidan was over-generalizing based on his ignorance. While Prolog is
not popular and generally unheard to the laymen, it does find its
application in many professional areas.

Which areas comprise a) absorbing research grant money with minimal thought
to useful results! A professional field if ever there was one.

What formal qualifications I have are oriented to computational
linguistics. I’ve read lots in the area, I’ve asked lots of questions of
people with relevant in-depth qualifications, and have good friends who’ve
done Ph.D-level work in the field. There is no real-world problem I can
think of, or have ever thought of, that would be best solved by turning to a
Prolog or Lisp-based NLP application. I’m generalising based on relevant
experience, not on ignorance.

--
On the quay of the little Black Sea port, where the rescued pair came once
more into contact with civilization, Dobrinton was bitten by a dog which was
assumed to be mad, though it may only have been indiscriminating. (Saki)
.

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