[MUD-Dev] Languages (slightly offtopic, was Text Parsing)

[Travis S. Casey]

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> >But a MUD doesn't need "precise communication"!
> 
> Yes it does. When I give the computer a command, I want it to understand
> *precisely* what I want and get busy doing it. I don't want to type for a
> long period of time, and I don't want to be encouraged to use confusing
> words because the computer can handle them half the time. I want to command
> the computer EXACTLY, every time. 
> 
> Natural language FAILS THIS TEST. We all know it fails this test. My mother
> thinks "I don't want any" means "I don't feel like getting up to get it so
> you should go bring it to me". My father thinks "I'm not hungry" means "I
> only want a *half* pound steak". Half of my friends think "I'm busy to go
> to the movies" means "Why don't you come over". (The other half think it
> means "I don't like you".) 

I'd like to point out that most of the participants in this discussion
haven't been using the term "natural language" -- the only people who have
have been Cynbe and those who think that "natural language" input isn't a
good idea.

There's a big difference between "natural language input" and using an
English-like command structure.  I like using an English-like structure,
because I think it makes things easier on newbies.  However, I don't claim
to be doing "natural language" and I'd make it clear to users that, while
the command language is somewhat flexible, it does have limits on what it
will accept (specifically, by giving good examples, good error messages,
and good documentation).

I don't know for sure that others have been deliberately avoiding the term
-- but I know I have.

> Language is inherently ambiguous. If I had a fantastic day yesterday, a
> terrific day today, and I have a wonderful day tomorrow, which day was 
> better? 

Language is ambiguous when dealing with synonyms and with ambiguous
things.  Language can be quite *unambiguous* when dealing with concrete
objects in a limited domain -- which is what mud commands are generally
dealing with.

How can "get the red box" be misunderstood, unless there is more than one
red box in the area?  Or "put the red sword in the box on the table"?
(Again, unless there's more than one sword, or more than one box on the
table, or more than one table that has a box on it.)

(Indeed, *no* language can handle everything that natural languages do
without ambiguity.  The only thing that lets such "languages" as
mathematical and musical notation be unambiguous is their limited domain.)

> >I agree wholeheartedly that users want consistency and "intuitiveness"--- but 
> >I don't believe that they really want to learn a different set of conventions 
> >from what they already know.
> 
> Mark, I hate to tell you this, but the population at large knows dick about
> the conventions of natural language. They can't spell, their grammar is
> atrocious, and their vocabulary is extremely limited. While NLP may be a
> really nifty project to work on, it just plain isn't something users are
> going to be able to work well with. 

These are very common misconceptions -- read any good introductory book on
linguistics, or, for a more popular treatment, try Pinker's _The Language
Instinct_.  (Spelling has nothing to do with natural language -- only
speech is natural.  Over 90% of sentences spoken in casual conversation
are perfectly grammatical (provided you're using the *actual* grammar of
the language, and not the idealized "grammar" taught in schools).  The
average person knows more than four times as many words than Shakespeare
used in all his writings.)

While I'm on the subject, another objection to the use of the term
"natural language" in this context:  only speech is natural language.
Writing is not natural to humans at all.  Thus, the only "natural
language input" systems are those that can understand speech.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) 



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