Simplest English Lesson for a Dumb Computer?

Question

I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the computer, the most incredibly simple english lessons, e.g., what words, can and what word combinations can not, constitute a sentence.
Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?
Thanks,
Darrz

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the computer, the most incredibly simple english lessons, e.g., what words, can and what word combinations can not, constitute a sentence. Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
Why do you think this is a simple task?
Gary

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the computer, the most incredibly simple english lessons, e.g., what words, can and what word combinations can not, constitute a sentence.[/nq]
Er "what words can, and what word combinations cannot ... " No, still no good. How about "Which word combinations are, and which are not, sentences"? I'd also remove the comma after "computer."
[nq:1]Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
Don't I wish. I would comment that the example you give is likely to be devilishly hard. Human beings can't agree on what a sentence is or is not. Good luck teaching that to a computer.

Bob Lieblich
Confessing ignorance

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the ... for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
[nq:1]Why do you think this is a simple task? Gary[/nq]
The english lessons MUST be simple, because the computer is a linguistic simpleton, and these lessons must be small because they are only part of a larger program.
It's a less is more, situation. The less complex the lesson, the more lessons I can add to the program.
Darrz

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the ... can and what word combinations can not, constitute a sentence.[/nq]
[nq:1]Er "what words can, and what word combinations cannot ... " No, still no good. How about "Which word combinations are, and which are not, sentences"? I'd also remove the comma after "computer."[/nq]
The syntax was chosen to accent the words "can" and "can not", which parallels the computers basic, binary operation, and my desire to keep the syntax rules VERY simple.
Thanks for the style input, however. When Larry's usage book makes it over the pond, I should pick one up.

I may have to take a break from the program in question, and write a new utility to VERY roughly analyze certain patterns of word combinations in popular usage, and then run it on some modern on-line writing to gather data. Or just get devilishly clever.

The devilish part should be no problem.

Darrz
[nq:1]Good luck teaching that to a computer.[/nq]
My "teaching" for the program will be much more humble than you might expect, but thanks.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
Your question is too broad for a newsgroup. It indicates, however, that you're just beginning to learn about a fascinating subject. One of the challenges is exemplified by a comparison of these two sentences: (1) "We gave the students books, and they enjoyed them," and (2) "We gave the students books, and they were very difficult." The word "they" refers to the students in the first case, and to the books in the second case. The sentences can't be parsed without an understanding of students and books.
I recommend that you search the web for information about two subjects: (1) Computational linguistics, which is a branch of linguistics, and (2) Natural language processing, which is in the domain of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a subdivision of computer science. Enjoy the learning experience, and good luck.

Mike Bandy
P. S. "English" is always capitalized. If this were an anthropology newsgroup, I wouldn't mention it. However, this is, after all, a newsgroup about English.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the computer, the most incredibly simple english lessons, e.g., what words, can and what word combinations can not, constitute a sentence. Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
The most obvious is to look into neural networks.
As others have made clear, you are trying an almost unthinkably difficult thing. But, on the ground that a journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step, think about these things:
The normal form for the basic English sentence is a subject and a predicate; the predicate tells us something about the subject. A predicate normally contains a verb, and may contain one or more objects. The normal order of the components of an English sentence is subject-verb-object.
That might get you to the ****-and-Jane stage.

Cordially,
Eric Walker
My opinions on English are available at
http://owlcroft.com/english/

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I'm attempting to teach a program I'm writing on the ... for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
[nq:1]Why do you think this is a simple task?[/nq]
Well, three-year-olds can do it. Mind you, three-year-old Russians can speak Russian, which is more than I can do, so maybe it is difficult, after all!

wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Do you have any recommendations for a few simple english instructions for an oh-so-dumb computer?[/nq]
Yacc is a small, simple program that is used to generate parsers for programming languages. It makes a parser program out of the grammar rules that you give it. The grammar rules are specified in BNF.

Some grammar rules for English might look like this:

prepositional phrase
preposition noun phrase
noun phrase
noun
[nq:1]article noun adjectival phrase noun adjectival phrase article noun[/nq]
adjectival phrase
adjective
[nq:1]adverb adjective[/nq]
And so on. But you also need a program to read words and figure out which parts of speech they are. For programming languages, Lex is used in combination with Yacc to accomplish this. But that probably won't work for English, because it contains many more words than programming languages do, and also many of its words have multiple meanings which can only be deduced from context.

Simplest English Lesson for a Dumb Computer?

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