Xref: utzoo sci.lang:7057 comp.cog-eng:1748 sci.psychology:3177 sci.philosophy.tech:3163 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu!pollack From: pollack@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jordan B Pollack) Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Computer Languages and the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis Message-ID: Date: 23 Aug 90 17:16:28 GMT References: <5137@munnari.oz.au> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: sci.lang Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 35 In-reply-to: jfl@munnari.oz.au's message of 21 Aug 90 04:52:57 GMT I once considered more fully researching this exact topic, but it seems more like it could only be targeted for the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Since nobody knows what "thought" is anyhow, a good approach is to study the effect of (native) programming language on natural language. It is clear that there is an extremely robust transfer effect, from these few examples: Charles Moore invented Forth. Forth functions are tiny. Moore writes like this: I invented Forth. It worked. I like it. Ken Iverson, the inventor of APL, sometimes criticized as a write-only language, creates fifty word sentences rife with grammatical complexity, so intricate and beautiful that I cant remember them. Guy Steele (a lisp maven) offers the following final sentence to his book COMMON LISP (first edition): This function is occasionally useful as an argument to other functions that require functions as arguments (Got that?) Finally, lets jump to sentence 2 of John Backus's 1978 Turing Award Lecture, also known as the "Apologia Fortrana", where he executes both a goto and a double reference: Readers [...] should turn to Section 16, the last section. Good luck in your research. -- Jordan Pollack Assistant Professor CIS Dept/OSU Laboratory for AI Research 2036 Neil Ave Email: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu Columbus, OH 43210 Fax/Phone: (614) 292-4890