language?

[David Vennik]

Well, people, I have been doing a lot of thinking about language in the
last few weeks.

If I may quote something which has become the inspiration for me to keep
trying to figure all this out:

"Paradoxically, an exact and detailed specification of any function
will, in principle, allow a computer to perform it." Pete Carrol
"Psybermagick"

I have thought from the very beginning of my recent new foray into the
field of OS designing, that some sort of communication system would have
to be at the heart of any OS in order to make it easily able to handle
many of the desired features that are enumerated on the TUNES web site.

What we need is a program which processes 'natural' language really.I
have now decided that the only thing preventing a computer from
understanding human language is the lack of a sufficient model (an exact
and detailed specification) of how it works. We can all describe how we
process information in general terms, but in all the gaps between the
words we describe lurks details which we may not reveal until we try to
make a model, and discover we can't find the right words to describe it.
I have started on this, and I have only sketched out the language
database structure and functions relating to matching words with words
in the meme database (as I am calling it) Further off in the distance I
can see other things which I presently only have vague descriptions of,
like the procedure required to recognise a 'legal' sentence, and error
correction (typos and grammar errors).

I have only really just started on this, but I feel very strongly that
this can be done, if we can only describe how it happens well enough. If
anyone wants to see what I am up to with it I can send them the latest
version of what I am doing.

My brain is boiling over with ideas relating to this, and I have trouble
starting talking about it, because I have trouble stopping my
elaborations. And I think they would be better placed in the description
I am developing at the moment, in logical order, rather than the lateral
jumping order that I tend to write in.

Nice to see you all back after the crazy end of year stuff.