<html><body><div style="font-family: tahoma,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>To be sure! But--as we see--at least since Babbage's era, that etymological and perhaps phenomenological grounding has been largely forgotten or elided. The mentions earlier in this thread of Saussure, Peirce and Chomsky are apposite. But, from the humanities side of things, where "language" is the modern/postmodern category of signs, intensions, and everything, one could cite a further legion. </div><div><br></div><div>Personally I am fond of the philosopher Donald Davidson's late dictum: "There is no such thing as a language... no boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally." Though this also tends to invalidate exasperation at uses of the term, in computer science or elsewhere. JDF</div><div><br></div><hr id="zwchr"><div style="color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;" data-mce-style="color: #000; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Paul Ceruzzi" <CeruzziP@si.edu><br><b>To: </b>"JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>, "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu><br><b>Cc: </b>"members" <members@sigcis.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 18:26:24<br><b>Subject: </b>RE: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?<br><div><br></div><style id="owaParaStyle"></style><div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;" data-mce-style="direction: ltr; font-family: Tahoma; color: #000000; font-size: 10pt;">And keep in mind that the English word is derived from the French word for "tongue." It implies an intimate connection with the human body.<div><br></div><div>Paul Ceruzzi <br><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: 16px" data-mce-style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #000000; font-size: 16px;"><hr><div id="divRpF540308" style="direction: ltr;" data-mce-style="direction: ltr;"><span face="Tahoma" size="2" color="#000000" data-mce-style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: small;" style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: small;"><b>From:</b> members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of JD Fleming [jfleming@sfu.ca]<br> <b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, November 05, 2014 8:00 PM<br> <b>To:</b> William W McMillan<br> <b>Cc:</b> members<br> <b>Subject:</b> Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?<br> </span><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="font-family:tahoma,new york,times,serif; font-size:12pt; color:#000000" data-mce-style="font-family: tahoma,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;"><div>Fascinating. My own current work is on the "real character" movement of the early Royal Society (the immediate antecedent of Leibniz's idea of a <em>characteristica universalis</em>, and one source of inspiration [I think] for his codification of binary notation). One thing I have learned in the course of my research is that for the members of this movement--John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Seth Ward, Francis Lodwick, and others--a "language" is more-or-less by definition effable, speakable. A symbolic and combinatorial notation of ideas, what they called a "character"--code, sort-of--is precisely *not* a language. This is why Wilkins's masterwork of 1668 is called <em>An essay towards a real character, </em>and<em> a philosophical language</em> (my emphasis). The "language," being a secondary and effable encoding of the character, is precisely by that token non-identical with the latter. Wilkins and his contemporaries would have been flummoxed by Ada Lovelace's use of "language," below. So I would recalibrate the initial question: when was the last time that "language" was not used, and couldn't be, in the context of the mathematization of communication that eventuates in computer science? And my answer would be: in the seventeenth century.</div><div>JD Fleming<br></div><div><br></div><hr id="zwchr"><div style="color:#000; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; text-decoration:none; font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:12pt" data-mce-style="color: #000; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>From: </b>"William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu><br> <b>To: </b>"members" <members@sigcis.org><br> <b>Sent: </b>Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 11:07:27<br> <b>Subject: </b>Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?<br><div><br></div>Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"<br><div><br></div>'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'<br><div><br></div>[emphasis added]<br><div><br></div>https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html<br><div><br></div>Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.<br><div><br></div>- Bill<br><div><br></div><br> ________________________________<br> F</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br><br></div><div><br></div><div>-- <br></div><div><span name="x"></span><div><span data-mce-style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;">J</span><span face="tahoma, new york, times, serif" data-mce-style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;" style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;">ames Dougal Fleming<br>Associate Professor<br>Department of English<br>Simon Fraser University</span></div><div>778-782-4713</div><div><span size="1" data-mce-style="font-size: xx-small;" style="font-size: xx-small;"><br></span><div><span><span face="tahoma, new york, times, serif" data-mce-style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;" style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;">Burnaby -- </span></span>British Columbia -- Canada.</div><div><div style="font-size: 12pt;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12pt;"><span face="tahoma, new york, times, serif" data-mce-style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;" style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif;"><br></span></div><div style="font-size: 12pt;" data-mce-style="font-size: 12pt;"><span face="tahoma, new york, times, serif" size="2" data-mce-style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif; font-size: small;" style="font-family: tahoma, 'new york', times, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 23.1875px;" data-mce-style="background-color: #ffffff; line-height: 23.1875px;"><i>He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went.</i> Matt.21:29.</span></span></div><div style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;" data-mce-style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;"><br></div></div></div><span name="x"></span><br></div></div></body></html>