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From: "Fishwick, Paul" <pxf130430@utdallas.edu> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Date: November 5, 2014 at 1:14:28 PM CST To: David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> Cc: members <members@sigcis.org>
David: I’d like to better understand your argument here:
" almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.”
Why is this contentious in your opinion? Regarding language, The work of Pierce and de Saussure (semiology, semiotics) may also be relevant to the discussion on language. -paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
On Nov 5, 2014, at 10:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> wrote:
t has two sources.
first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians).
second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.
Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project).
David
2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be>: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
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-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com