In article , Richard Conway
wrote:
I don't know how she worked it out - or how much it was deliberate - but
my 14 month old granddaughter calls our small dogs 'dog' and her own
(much larger) dog 'dog-dog'. One of us swears that, on seeing a horse,
she called it 'dog-dog-dog'. Now tell me how you'd program a computer to
produce the possible grammar behind that!

You'd have to create an algorithm that took factors such as the dimensions
and mass of an animal and output the word dog x number of times as a
result!

That's easy enough. The problem is how the easily-communicated idea developed
in the first place. No one has taught her the concept of multiple words =
bigger and, at the stage of hardly even having a communicable vocabulary
(whilst she talks plenty I don't pretend to understand any of it - except to
her!) she appears to have generated a grammar of her own. This isn't a new
observation: very young children brought up in a family using (deaf) sign
language will probably acquire a formal, slow, limited, grammar but - where
able to converse with other, similar kids at a young enough age, develop a
natural fast, open-ended grammar of their own making.
this is uk.d-i-y.grammar isnt it?
Organic life is far more proficient than any artificial equivalent that we can
(yet) design.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
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