Start from assigning each individual rigid concept (not word!) of human language a code, like the colors have HTML codes. Allow a sentence tag (i.e., <sentence>).
For example, the above paragraph may be written like:
<sentence subject="starting-point" comment= "each-human- language-concept,new-code- assignation"> <sentence subject="each-human- language-concept" comment="not-equivalent- single-word"> <sentence subject="new-code" comment="similarity-HTML- color-code"> <sentence subject="starting-point- second-step" comment="HTML-sentence- tag-allowance">
This allows quite extensive capability to express thoughts, and the bloggers who want to blog internationally, may like to play with it, inventing ways how to express quite complex ideas with it, and to improve the browser capabilities to show their thoughts in human languages.
The hyphenation in the example is used in the meaning of conceptual intersection (an intersecting of the sets of objects that the concepts represent)
The comma in the [comment= "each-human- language-concept, new-code-assignation"] - for the writer's convenience - culd mean a nested statement, so a sentence like
<sentence topic="1" comment="2,3">
would mean
"1 is characterized by (2 being characterized by 3)"-- id3as, Aug 11 2007 Lojban http://www.lojban.o...p?page=Home+Page&bl [globaltourniquet, Aug 12 2007] Toulmin http://commfaculty....rg%20idea%202-1.htm [hippo, Aug 13 2007] This looks like an xml dialect, relying on a universal meta-language. I think Chomsky invented one which he called 'deep structure', but more recently the required degree of universality has been supposed to be impossible (I forget by whom). I ought to post links, I know, but real life is calling. Hang on...-- pertinax, Aug 11 2007 Agreed with [pertinax] that just looks like an XML dialect.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Aug 11 2007 Right, what about the assigning codes to concepts part?-- id3as, Aug 11 2007 Well, the ideal is to have a possibility to program sentences in fashion "Write once, run everywhere."
Just like computer translates certain computer languages to machine languages, ideally, this would be a computer language that is easily translate-able to human languages.
I think making it all work from scratch may be a daunting task, so I see realistic is to just implement some basic capabilities.
Maybe some other XML implementation would be better.-- id3as, Aug 11 2007 // Start from assigning each individual rigid concept (not word!)
Problem: Concepts are neither individual (that is, clearly delineated from each other), nor rigid (unchanging), nor do they exist as separate entities from the language you express them in.
The suggestion amounts to inventing your own pidgin language. After an author learns it, they can add translations to pidgin to their document (or to document fragments), and browsers can automatically present those translations in the end user's native language - the translations will be dull and a bit cumbersome, but they'll be "correct", if you keep mostly to statements of fact.-- jutta, Aug 12 2007 :-) [jutta], not necessarily a new pidgin language.
All what could be necessary is a set of instructions how to enter English (or other language) text to the translation software (such as SysTran), so that it would output translations that are correct sentences (in terms of meaning) in other languages.
Having these instructions, a blogger who wants to blog internationally, could make a class, which queries the translation software or an online service, and replace the source code (English written with regard to these instructions) with the translation in the language detected.
So, to send a suggestion to create these instructions for a company that develops machine translation software, would be a better idea, right?-- id3as, Aug 12 2007 Have you heard of Lojban? This idea sounds something like it, though I think the lojban concept is actually successful at a higher level than what is described here. It's a human usable language invented to be readable programmatically, based on predicate structure.
See link. Also see wikipedia's entry on it.
I looked at this four years or so ago. Here's my memory of it that sticks with me - think of verbs as functions and the subject and predicate as parameters of the function.-- globaltourniquet, Aug 12 2007 This sort of decomposition of language into concepts and a useful meta-structure is way more complex than you seem to think. Toulmin's work on the structure of relatively simple 'arguments' illustrates this (see link - scroll down to the diagrams). In his model are a claim, backed up by grounds for the claim, a warrant that connects the claim to the grounds, backing, rebuttal, and qualifiers.-- hippo, Aug 13 2007 random, halfbakery