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From: oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: syn-taxed [was Re: Complexity of syntax]
Message-ID: <19876@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
Date: 6 Jan 91 07:54:16 GMT
References: <1991Jan5.044445.15116@agate.berkeley.edu> <13857:Jan506:12:5891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Jan5.081755.23488@agate.berkeley.edu> <14679:Jan509:13:1391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
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In article <14679:Jan509:13:1391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>One of the failures of the modern computer science curriculum is that it
>teaches people to think that ``syntax'' refers to a certain type of
>formal grammar.

... and some people are destined to eat the menu instead of the meal.

Dan, I am eagerly awaiting your ``fix'' to the past or present computer
science curriculum. If you have something important (!) to say, why not
just say it, instead of keep implying that you have something important?

Here, I'll be nice, and give you something on the topic I happen to have
around, just to get you started:

Minsky, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, pp 226: [1]
   
   ... we defined a rule of inference to be an effetive test to decide
   wheter a string s can be deduced from a set of strings s1,...sn. We
   required the test to be effective so that we could require the test of a
   proof to be effective. But we did not really tie things down securely
   enough, for one might still make a rule of inference depend (in some
   effective way) upon some understanding of what the strings ``mean''.
   That is, one might have some rule of inference depend upon a certain
   ``interpretation'' of the strings as asserting things about some
   well-understood subject matter; the strings might, for example, be
   sentences in English. (For example, the strings in chapter 4 - the
   ``regular espressions'' were understood to represent the ``regular sets'',
   and our proofs about regular expressions used references to these
   understood meanings.)
   
   To avoid such dangerous questions, we propose to restrict ourselves to
   rules of inference that concern themselves entirely with the arrangement
   of symbols within strings -- i.e., to the visible form of the strings as
   printed on a page -- and we rule out reference to meanings. This will
   force us, for the present, to direct our attention toward what is often
   called the domain of ``syntax'' -- questions about how expressions are
   assembled and analysed -- rather than the domain of ``semantics'' --
   questions of the meanings of expressions.

[deja vu !!] 

cheers... oz
---
[1] Minsky, Marvin, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines,
    Prentice-hall Series in Automatic Computation, Englewood Cliffs, 
    N.J., 1967
---
The king: If there's no meaning	   	    Usenet:    oz@nexus.yorku.ca
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