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Mike: > > > Mulling my comments about the lexicon, perhaps I should have > > > called this category "Semantic Precision & Expressiveness". > > > > Would that be different from what I called Compendiousness > > -- having extra words to express rare or highly nuanced > > concepts that could not easily be as precisely expressed > > periphrastically? > > What would you say if I suggested that Compendiousness is > subsumed by Expressiveness, as is a well-developed > Derivational Morphology? Sounds fair. [...] > However, I should state, OTOH, that only part of my motivation > for favoring universality and naturalness, at least for my > own creation, stems from the desire to make things easier > for humans--although I do maintain that this in itself is > a worthwhile goal. The other part of my motivation stems > from the observation that, for all their irregularity and > lack of rigor, it cannot be denied that natlangs work. > > Even the most subtle of logical meanings can ultimately be > expressed using natlangs, given sufficient care on the part > of the speaker. I suspect that insofar as they work (and > usually quite well), they must be doing something right; > when we start to discard language universals to any significant > degree, I can't help but wonder if we are going astray. > This, again, is just a feeling on my part. Maybe in some idealized version of the world, what you say is true. But laws and legal contracts are among the most carefully drafted texts, yet many legal disputes hinge on logical, semantic and syntactic ambiguities. I think it is much truer to say that for most types of discourse people don't really feel the need for nonamiguity and precision; their lack does not impede communication. But when it comes to the crunch, as with legal texts, natural language proves inadequate. > > However, as I've said elsewhere, uncompromising logicality is > > not so hard to achieve if that is your starting point in the > > design process. Just take a logical formula, put it in > > Polish notation, lexicalize it, and hey presto you have > > something syntactically and logically unambiguous. The > > challenge is to make the result flexible, concise and > > user-friendly. > > I am reading quite a bit on the topic, and I am already brewing > some ideas in this department. Incidentally, have you ever > done programming in LISP or Scheme? No -- I have done pretty much no programming ever. --And.