Possible: Formula to Language

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Cannon, Jul 21, 2008.

  1. Cannon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    207
    For more or less the a fact still remains that a formula to language is still not at hand. For if we have defined parts of speech with rules and exceptions than so is true for a mathematical formula of speech and/or the written word. So with this as said marked true by common sense, has it become too difficult to mark the basis of this formula? No, but in fact that all conversations could be mapped and compiled to a list of all possibly correct sentences and paragraphs.

    The verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections make your sentence. Whereas your subject, predicate, object and compliment dictate to what you may be mentioning. For the difference between written and spoken is grammar. So as we have our basis, we now have what moves us from section to section. Punctuation of the colon, semi-colon, comma, question, exclamation and the period. As said we will now give a basis to the hypothesis.

    This above is a total of 11 variables with up to 5 functions to each variable not including conjunctions. Conjunctions may be used at the beginning, after the colon, after the semi-colon, after the first comma, the second comma and lastly, and. Giving us from conjunctions an additional 6 functions to the previous 5 functions. Giving us a total of 11 variables, 1 multiplex as in the conjunction is playing both fields and 11 total functions.

    Grammar is nothing more than the proper use of words and punctuation.

    This would give 121 formulas to language assuming that all languages have the same parts of speech. If not, a break down of each varying language would ensue. This is not the formulas to it, for I believe it would either take a man his entire life or a super computer.

    A variable is represented by the numerical value that it may be one of may words. These words must also be taken into account of the sentence correctionality. Correctionality being un-educated and not knowing of a proper word is defined of as words suiting each other in proper association.

    So hereto as posted by AskOxford.com

    The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc.

    With that stated, there would be (11^11(approx250,000))*2 as being the total number of sentence possibilities in our language. So as said, it would take a super computer. that was only an approximation. I would have no clue to what the actual number is, may be higher, or lower but either way will be a very large number.

    I would appreciate any additional information
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. darini Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    47
    My professor created a logical way to understand Language (Portuguese, in our case). He named it "Dialectics of Portuguese Language".

    He studied all of the relationships among elements of any language structure and created graphics to help us in the analysis. It's focused in Portuguese, but I believe that it can be used for many Indo-European languages. Here's the graphic to analise the Morphological Level:

    http://rapidshare.com/files/131425599/06_ESTRUTURA_MORFOL____GICA_DA_ORA_____O.doc.html

    Reading your post, it was the first thing that came to my mind, as he's another scholar who sees languages in a more rational way. He divided the Language into 8 Levels, from orational to morphossintatic (please, correct my spell) level.

    The interesting thing is that it's not grammar at all. We see the Dialects as a logical way to study Languages, not a bunch of rules to be memorized.

    Just to give him credits, his name is Alcebíades Fernandes Júnior.

    cheers
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    They don't. Chinese has only nouns and verbs. Plus a few particles that really serve no purpose except to make it easier to parse the sentence, and therefore are not needed in writing where homonyms are not a problem.

    Furthermore, we're accustomed to languages with a subject-verb-object syntactic structure or something similar. There are many other types of structures, such as topic-description, as in Japanese.
    I'm not sure how you arrived at that formula. I think every sentence in your post has more than ten words and some have more than twenty.
    I don't think it would work as well for a language like English in which structure is treated rather casually. We create new combinations like user-friendly, fuel-efficient and cost-effective all the time. I think it would be severely stressed by Chinese, whose grammar has thousands of micro-rules, each governing a small set of words (e.g., names of large flat objects), rather than elaborate macro-rules, each governing tens of thousands of words. The chart would certainly be much larger and probably require four or five dimensions.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. darini Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    47
    But it does have more dimensions, as we have a "sub-graphic" for each of what we call "Morphological Function" (prepositions, conjuctions, numerals etc). Let's do it in English using your example:

    I programmed a user-friendly software.

    First thing is recognise the verb. So:

    programmed: MF: verb(1st singular person, indicative, simple past, indicative), because it corresponds with the Subjective Pronoun "I" in the sentence.

    Now, we ask "who?" to the verb. Consider you don't know what function "I" is, then you have to look at the "Subjective Pronouns" graphic and get the answer.

    I: MF: Subjective Pronoun, because it indicates the 1st singular person and has reciprocal correspondence with the verb "programmed".

    Next step: we ask "what?" to the verb. We get:

    software

    OK, now, how do we classify "software"? According to the graphic, it can only be a pronoun, a noun or a numeral. So, let's take a look at the pronoun and numeral graphics to try to find the word "software" over there. Didn't find? OK, so it's a noun.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    software: MF: noun(neutral, singular), because it has an indefinite article put before it.

    a: MF: indefinite article, because, in an indefinite way, indicates the referentials of its signification.

    Last but not the least, we have "user-friendly". Let's consider it a single word:

    user-friendly

    This word is related to "software", which we already know it's a noun. So, looking againg to the graphics, we see the functions related to a noun are: articles, adjectives, numerals, prepositions, conjuctions and pronouns. We look for the word "user-friendly" at the following graphics / tables: articles, numerals, prepositions, conjuctions and pronouns but (of course) cannot find it. So, it's an adjective.

    user-friendly: MF: adjective, becuse it has subjective correspondence with the noun "software" in the sentence.

    That's it. That's the Dialectics of English.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    cheers
     

Share This Page