Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdragon!djsalomon
From: djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Perfect language features: how many languages?
Message-ID: <5149@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 88 19:45:58 GMT
References: <5028@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1566@uhccux.UUCP>
Reply-To: djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 22

In article <1566@uhccux.UUCP> lee@uhccux.UUCP (Greg Lee) writes:
>From article <5028@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, by djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon):
 > > ...
 > > But you have to admit that computer languages are more like
 > > natural languages than they are like vaccines.  That is all I said.
 >
 >This is tangential, but natural languages are maybe something like
 >vaccines.  One current theory of syntax, arc pair grammar, describes
 >languages as sets of contraints (antibodies?) on sentence structure.
 >That is to say, a grammar characterizes the complement of the
 >permissible sentences.  (Good health is the absence of disease.)
 
It seems to me that you are comparing natural language to the
human immune system, not to a vaccine.  A vaccine is a virus or bacteria
look-alike that stimulates the natural defense mechanism of the body.
Antibodies are created by the body, they are NOT contained in the
vaccine.

While it may be fun stretching the imagination to find similarities
between languages and vaccines, hammers, screwdrivers, or duck-billed
platypuses, I don't think it is a sound basis on which to build a
language design.