zrm (12/05/82)
A couple things about architechture & AI: The suggestion of connecting itty-bitty processors and letting them run at random is very similar to a spoof of AI research in "A Stress Analysis of A Strapless Evening Gown & Other Essays for a Scientific Age" called "The Chaostron" or some such. But that is on the right track. Yesterday I attended a lecture about "linguistic chimps", one of the lastest pop-science crazes. As it turns out, chimps are completely incapable of syntax, not to mention other dubious aspects of these experimenmts. The lecturer then went on to explore the differences between chimp and human brain. There are remarkably few differences. There *seems* to be no physical explaination for such a gross deficit in language aquisition as a total lack of syntax. Indeed chimps aquire other skills much faster than human childeren, and also aquire large vocabularies. So why no syntax? The key seems to be development time. Chimps are born more developed and develope much faster than human childeren. Chimps are born with 60% of adult brain-mass, and make up the 40% they dont have much faster than human childeren, which are born with 24% of adult brain-mass and take 15-20 years to get up to full brain weight. Further, there is an evolutionary artifact that manifests itself in a disorder that causes premature puberty at about the same age as great apes mature. The rest of childhood is a tacked-on kludge. Without all this unmade brain constantly being subjected to stimuli as it develops, we would not be the linguistic creatures we are. Dolphins seem to be far more promising. Does anyone know about dolphin studies? Unfortunatly this field is awash in charlatans. Cheers, Zig
alj (12/15/82)
This is a followup to the article referring to monkey's inability to deal with syntax: I believe that Schank would say that syntax is pretty much irrelevant to human understanding of natural language. Got that? Compilers are neat, but we're neater still. . . Andy Judkis BTL Lincroft
wsp (12/16/82)
If, as Shank says, syntax is irrelevant to human language understanding, what purpose does it serve? Syntax is complex, takes many years to learn, and differs markedly from one language to another (although there are some deep correspondances). I have always believed that evolution is pars- imonious, i.e., vestigal and useless appendages tend to disappear. Why would we retain something as obtrusive as syntax if it served no evolutionary purpose? Peter Benson ittdcd-west (619) 578-3080
debray (12/21/82)
I agree that syntax is not AS important to natural languages as it is to programming languages (since, obviously, we can understand sentences even if they are somewhat ungrammatical). However, I can't agree with Schank when he calls syntax "irrelevant" to natural languages : it's obvious that very often, small structural (syntactic) changes to a sentence will change its meaning significantly. Try the following two sentences, where the only difference between the first and the second is in the punctuation (and punctuation, as we all know (I hope!), is syntax) : Mary loves a man who plays tennis, and runs. ( => Mary runs ; Mary loves a guy who plays tennis.) Mary loves a man who plays tennis and runs. ( => Mary loves a guy ; that guy plays tennis and runs.) The difference between natural and programming languages in this regard is due, I think, to the vast real-world database at our disposal, which is implicitly referred to in our everyday use of natural language ; that information is so helpful in helping us understand the meanings of sentences that syntactic errors are not (necessarily) fatal. Richard Montague's work on the relationship of natural language syntax and semantics is a very interesting approach to the issue. I agree with Andy, though, that we're much neater than compilers! Saumya K. Debray SUNY @ Stony Brook