4 ms·

> When you begin to formalize human language in such a way that it becomes unambiguous, you effectively just create a new programming language. Exactly. This i

> When you begin to formalize human language in such a way that it becomes unambiguous, you effectively just create a new programming language. Exactly. This is why professional jargon (a) exists. Pick a noun in computers and programming. It has another meaning in another context. This is why contracts are written in "legal English" (b) and not in normal English. a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon#Examples b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English

w_t_payne 11y ago
That's why I'm really keen on applying NLP (Natural Language Processing) to requirements documents.
pluma 11y ago
Legalese is not unambiguous. It is minimally ambiguous. Ambiguities can still derive from the way the (ideally completely unambiguous) terminology is used. In order to have a perfectly unambiguous legal document it would need to consist of a single well-defined phrase with a single well-defined context. If legalese were as unambiguous as you seem to think it is, most case law could be fully automated to the point we'd barely ever need actual lawyers and courts. The only perfect language is the language of mathematics (if we ignore conflicting notations and definitions often being relative to a specific -- though typically well-defined -- problem domain). As soon as it involves the real world, things get messy and the wider the margin of error becomes. Physics and Chemistry tend to work relatively well (unless you try to accurately predict complex systems). Biology a bit less so. Psychology is where things start to fall apart. Sociology is where it completely breaks down. But even legalese isn't as well-defined as mathematics. Simply because it has to refer to pre-existing concepts from the start or else it wouldn't be of any actual use (e.g. what's the point of defining "theft" without referring to any real-world interactions -- but once you involve real-world interactions you've left the rational objective domain and rely on the subjective experience of human observers).

w_t_payne 11y ago

That's why I'm really keen on applying NLP (Natural Language Processing) to requirements documents.

pluma 11y ago

Legalese is not unambiguous. It is minimally ambiguous. Ambiguities can still derive from the way the (ideally completely unambiguous) terminology is used. In order to have a perfectly unambiguous legal document it would need to consist of a single well-defined phrase with a single well-defined context. If legalese were as unambiguous as you seem to think it is, most case law could be fully automated to the point we'd barely ever need actual lawyers and courts. The only perfect language is the language of mathematics (if we ignore conflicting notations and definitions often being relative to a specific -- though typically well-defined -- problem domain). As soon as it involves the real world, things get messy and the wider the margin of error becomes. Physics and Chemistry tend to work relatively well (unless you try to accurately predict complex systems). Biology a bit less so. Psychology is where things start to fall apart. Sociology is where it completely breaks down. But even legalese isn't as well-defined as mathematics. Simply because it has to refer to pre-existing concepts from the start or else it wouldn't be of any actual use (e.g. what's the point of defining "theft" without referring to any real-world interactions -- but once you involve real-world interactions you've left the rational objective domain and rely on the subjective experience of human observers).