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That's true, but it's not at all what he said. He argued that language is a hard problem because it's linked with culture, and always changing. I think this is

That's true, but it's not at all what he said. He argued that language is a hard problem because it's linked with culture, and always changing. I think this is incorrect, because it doesn't stop humans from picking up second languages or from understanding older texts in their native languages. The hard part is whatever loop humans have that translates sentences into concepts -- not the loop that uses one sentence-concept chunk to link a new sentence to a new concept. That's in the library, not the interpreter.

aswanson 19y ago
That's true, but it's not at all what he said What he implied from culture, I took to mean a polymorphic mapping of "sentences" or "units of communication" in a given understood context that can be learned only through experience. it doesn't stop humans from picking up second languages or from understanding older texts in their native languages It doesn't stop them, but it is far from trivial to learn a new language or to even resolve syntactic,lexical, or sematic ambiguity without context, even in a native speakers language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity. The ill-posed nature of this mapping is not static, and for people not speaking their native language or young children this becomes the basis for some forms of comedy. As far as I know we have no generic grammar that can generate the rules for all languages; there is no universal "interpreter", and it is not certain that "concept" can be decoupled from "phrase" or "sentence" without context, so I don't think your separation of "library" and "interpreter" holds.
- angstrom 19y ago
  That is in fact much closer to what I was thinking. The cultural context is important when it comes to understanding the less formal common grammar we humans tend to use more frequently and which is littered throughout the Internet. We can understand 400, 800, etc year old text, but one of the first things you'll notice is the language has terminology and informal phrases that may die off, live on, or evolve over the years. Toss in ambiguity, metaphores, double entendres, etc and it's not as simple. Perfect example would be Shakespeare. His style is rife with creative linguistic twists.

aswanson 19y ago

That's true, but it's not at all what he said What he implied from culture, I took to mean a polymorphic mapping of "sentences" or "units of communication" in a given understood context that can be learned only through experience. it doesn't stop humans from picking up second languages or from understanding older texts in their native languages It doesn't stop them, but it is far from trivial to learn a new language or to even resolve syntactic,lexical, or sematic ambiguity without context, even in a native speakers language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity. The ill-posed nature of this mapping is not static, and for people not speaking their native language or young children this becomes the basis for some forms of comedy. As far as I know we have no generic grammar that can generate the rules for all languages; there is no universal "interpreter", and it is not certain that "concept" can be decoupled from "phrase" or "sentence" without context, so I don't think your separation of "library" and "interpreter" holds.

angstrom 19y ago
That is in fact much closer to what I was thinking. The cultural context is important when it comes to understanding the less formal common grammar we humans tend to use more frequently and which is littered throughout the Internet. We can understand 400, 800, etc year old text, but one of the first things you'll notice is the language has terminology and informal phrases that may die off, live on, or evolve over the years. Toss in ambiguity, metaphores, double entendres, etc and it's not as simple. Perfect example would be Shakespeare. His style is rife with creative linguistic twists.