🚀 go-pugleaf

Marcos wrote:
> >But even then there are simple examples where a purely syntactic
> >approach has to fail, even between relatively similar languages like
> >English and German. In these two languages the most salient examples for
> >this are negation and the generic use of articles. A universal language
> 
> I think you're talking here about a "generation" problem. I would like
> you to give an example if not.

Here are some examples, where a syntactic approach would fail: 

   Peter does _not_ see Mary.
 = Peter sieht Maria _nicht_.

   Peter does _not_ see many guests.
/= Peter sieht viele G�ste _nicht_.

The correct translation would be:

   Peter sieht _nicht_ viele G�ste.

Compare this to the passive of the English sentence:

   _not_ many guests are seen by Peter.

Another example:

   Er kaufte _kein_ Salz.
   He did _not_ buy _any_ salt.

   r und p definieren _kein_ Dreieck.
/= r and p do _not_ define _any_ triangle.

If the negation formalism of your formal language copies the German or
the English formalism, you get wrong results in the other language. A
logical approach, on the other hand, is to limited, as logic only knows
sentence negation. It thus is far less a generation problem than a
question of how to formalise negation.

Boyd

-- 
Boyd Buchin                - Fakult�t f�r Informatik
Universit�t der Bundeswehr - 85577 Neubiberg, Germany
http://inf1-www.informatik.unibw-muenchen.de/Boyd