Language and Computers

Language is a complicated system of communication, and yet it is something most of us never eve think of as we exchange ideas and opinions. It is interesting to think that there is still so much about the acquisition of language that is not known.  The idea of a Universal Grammar (UG) is particularly interesting – to think that language is not something simply learned, but also in some ways an innate part of our being. It is also interesting to look at UG in various languages, seeing how the structure differs between various languages and yet, native speakers all tend to acquire language similarly regardless of the language and structure.

Chapter addressed some of the more typical classroom aspects of syntax and language acquisition – most children learn about parts of speech at a fairly young age, but it gave much more concrete definitions for each part of speech, and showed how distribution can be used to determine which category a given word belongs in. It also discussed aspects of how language develops – how new words are created and accepted based on class – nouns and verbs are easy to create, prepositions and pronouns, not so much.

Chapter Three showed how language trees can be used to break down sentences into a very specific structure using rules based on the parts of speech explored in the second chapter. These trees showed a very scientific approach to the process of building a sentence or breaking it down.

Overall, this reading really showed why some of the difficulties in trying to teach machines human language exist. The reasons that programs like Google Translate do not work effectively for any long text are based in some of the difficulties we have in understanding language acquisition and also on the complicated, recursive nature of language itself.