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A comment on John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented. Parent comment

Re:John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented by cscurmudgeon on Friday March 22, 2013 @08:39AM (#5422529)
It is definitely accidental given that they had no computers back then. It makes sense as Classical Sanskrit was an effort to remove ambiguity in Vedic Sanskrit and improve precision while still being a natural language. A lot, not all, of modern NLP is about removing ambiguity.

The way we describe grammars can be attributed to one of the first Sanskrit grammarians, Pāṇini.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form

The idea of semantic roles can also be traced back to him.

http://elies.rediris.es/elies11/cap5111.htm

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Re:John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented by andreasvc on Friday March 22, 2013 @05:58PM (#5426059)
It is odd to say NLP is about "removing ambiguity". Rather, it is about _coping_ with ambiguity (of the linguistic variety). Using a language with (supposedly) less ambiguity would just be a cop-out, not a real solution.
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Re:John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented by cscurmudgeon on Friday March 22, 2013 @06:10PM (#5426103)
Agreed. We need to understand how humans do language fully with ambiguity. We should also study Sanskrit and understand it fully from an AI perspective.

Otherwise, it is like trying to go to a planet in the Andromeda galaxy without first ever going to the moon. Never gonna happen.

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Re:John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented by batgaijin on Friday March 22, 2013 @09:38PM (#5426889)
well... I mean do you think that a language evolved that is this easy to parse accidental? I mean our brains are computers using mimicry and heuristics... why isn't that accounted for more in the creation of this language?
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