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From: ralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Syntactical *definition* of English
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Date: 19 Oct 88 20:15:24 GMT
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In article <6946@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> budd@mist.UUCP (Tim Budd) writes:
>Linguist, Noam Chomsky, not a computer scientist.  
<At the time (mid 1950's), there was great hope that a CFL, or at worst a CSL
>(context sensitive language) could be found that would describe English, and
>other such grammars developed for other natural languages.
even stilted English would be enough for me. I just want to talk to my
Unix system in a more converstational manner, I have having the keystrokes
'ls -al' burned into my brain, wasting those valuable neural pathways.

>Such efforts more or less met with utter and complete defeat in the late 
>50's and 60's.
Interesting that some of the technology lived on in the educational system:
(ie my school system)
'phonics' (the name given to my 3rd grade language class), where we learned
S -> N V, and more elaborate sentence diagramming in 7th grade:
S -> NP VP, NP -> prep N, N -> cat,dog, prep -> about, above & 50 others.

Then, in college, I learned about REAL linguistics and affix hopping and
such.
-- 
					- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.
Internet: ralphw@ius3.cs.cmu.edu    Phone:(412) CMU-BUGS
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA
"You can do what you want with my computer, but leave me alone!8-)"