Mathematical Linguistics

by Andras Kornai

Mathematical Linguistics introduces the mathematical foundations of linguistics to computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians interested in natural language processing. The book presents linguistics as a cumulative body of knowledge from the ground no prior knowledge of linguistics is assumed. As the first textbook of its kind, this book is useful for those in information science and in natural language technologies.

Genres: Linguistics, Mathematics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 9, 2007

Reviews

[Friend of the Talking Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

The brain does not use mathematics internally, so its production, including language, is poorly described by mathematics. Recursive formal grammars might at first seem a reasonable model of the grammar of a natural language, but the maximum depth of recursion is really low: "an anti-missile missile" is a common phrase, but "an anti-anti-missile missile missile" is a contrived expression that, judging by the Google search results, is only used in the context of describing how recursive formal grammars are a reasonable model of the grammar of a natural language. The sentence "This sentence is false" is normally nonsensical, but between "The first sentence of chapter 1 of the official biography of Kim Jong Il says that he was born on February 16, 1942 in a secret camp on Mt. Paektu," and "Soviet archives show that, in fact, he was born in 1941 in the Soviet Union, which was sheltering his father Kim Il Sung, an anti-Japanese guerrilla," it makes perfect sense. So we have little patchy theories of syntax, morphology, semantics that are not universally applicable. But this is okay: a five-year-old can say, "What does she doing?" and "When I grow up, I am going to be a office," and we can still say that she knows her native language.

[Reza Putra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matematika adalah alat yang terlalu primitif untuk mengamati kompleksitas bahasa alami (yang entah bagaimana disederhanakan). Formula matematika yang ada saat ini masih mengerdilkan bahasa.