Translating Sentences From A Natural Language Into An Artificial Language
Sentences in natural languages can be ambiguous, whereas the languages of the sentential logic and predicate logics are precise. Translation can reveal such ambiguities and express precisely the intended meaning.
For example take the English sentence “Father Ted married Jack and Jill”. Does this mean Jack married Jill? In translating we might make the following assignments: Individual Constants
- a: Father Ted
- b: Jack
- c: Jill
Predicates:
- Mαβγ: α officiated at the marriage of β to γ
Using these assignments the sentence above could be translated as follows:
- M(a, b, c): Father Ted officiated at the marriage of Jack and Jill.
- ∃x ∃y (M(a, b, x) ∧ M(a, c, y)): Father Ted officiated at the marriage of Jack to somebody and Father Ted officiated at the marriage of Jill to somebody.
- ∃x ∃y (M(x, a, b) ∧ M(y, a, c)): Somebody officiated at the marriage of Father Ted to Jack and somebody officiated at the marriage of Father Ted to Jill.
To establish which is the correct translation of “Father Ted married Jack and Jill”, it would be necessary to ask the speaker exactly what was meant.
Read more about this topic: Atomic Sentence
Famous quotes containing the words translating, sentences, natural, language and/or artificial:
“When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar.’”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Language is an archeological vehicle ... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.”
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“These are not the artificial forests of an English king,—a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws but those of nature. The aborigines have never been dispossessed, nor nature disforested.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)