Natural Language Messages
This research focuses on the event that we receive a signal / message that is either not directed at us (eavesdropping) or one that is in its natural communicative form. To tackle this difficult but probable scenario, methods are being developed that will first detect if a signal has intelligent-like structure, categorize the type of structure detected and then decipher its content: from its physical level encoding and patterns to the parts-of-speech, which encode internal and external ontologies.
Primarily, this structure modeling focuses on the search for generic human and inter-species language universals to devise computational methods by which language can be discriminated from non-language and core structural syntactic elements of unknown languages can be detected. Aims of this research include: contributing to the understanding of language structure and the detection of intelligent language-like features in signals, to aid the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The problem goal is therefore to separate language from non-language without dialogue, and learn something about the structure of language in the passing. The language may not be human (animals, aliens, computers...), the perceptual space can be unknown, and we cannot assume human language structure but must begin somewhere. We need to approach the language signal from a naive viewpoint, in effect, increasing our ignorance and assuming as little as possible.
Read more about this topic: Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Famous quotes containing the words natural, language and/or messages:
“It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)
“Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God. Robert: They come from your imagination. Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)