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Guest

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

cheers

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:
[quote]I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.
[/quote]
Youu mean, the bit of mathematics that Chomsky apparently had some
influence on 50 years ago? Has virtually nothing to do with
linguistics today (or then, either, for that matter).

The closest you might find to mathematical formulations in linguistics
was "Montague Grammar," an attempt to meld symbolic logic with syntax/
semantics. There were a couple of textbooks on it.

There>s also the obscure discipline of mathematical linguistics, which
tries to describe patterns formally, and the very popular
computational linguistics, which involves data processing applications
to just about anything.

Guest

On Jul 14, 11:27 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

Youu mean, the bit of mathematics that Chomsky apparently had some
influence on 50 years ago? Has virtually nothing to do with
linguistics today (or then, either, for that matter).
[/quote]
Pardon my ignorance ... I>m a comp. sci. / math major. What I have in
mind specifically is, yeah, the Chomsky generative grammars. I don>t
know how much they>re used in linguistics proper but they>re still
*very* widely used in CS. Anyway, that>s probably not a very important
point. The main problem is that he has a hard time with math, so I
thought a book whose content is kind of in between linguistics and
math might help him reason about substitution, recursion, etc.

I don>t know about 'mathematical linguistics' outside of generative
grammars, which are used for writing parsers.

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 15, 12:04 am, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:
[quote]On Jul 14, 11:27 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

Youu mean, the bit of mathematics that Chomsky apparently had some
influence on 50 years ago? Has virtually nothing to do with
linguistics today (or then, either, for that matter).

Pardon my ignorance ... I>m a comp. sci. / math major. What I have in
mind specifically is, yeah, the Chomsky generative grammars. I don>t
know how much they>re used in linguistics proper but they>re still
*very* widely used in CS. Anyway, that>s probably not a very important
point. The main problem is that he has a hard time with math, so I
thought a book whose content is kind of in between linguistics and
math might help him reason about substitution, recursion, etc.

I don>t know about 'mathematical linguistics' outside of generative
grammars, which are used for writing parsers.
[/quote]
Mathematical linguistics doesn>t impinge on generative grammar, which
was the way of looking at syntax pioneered by Chomsky back then.
Someone who isn>t at home in math shouldn>t have any trouble in
linguistics because of that. (There are areas that use _statistics_ a
lot, such as sociolinguistics, but not areas that use hardcore math
besides the area that specifically says so in its name.

Pubkeybreaker · Guest

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:
[quote]I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.
[/quote]
See: Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages & Computation by Hopcroft & Ullman.

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 15, 7:40 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...@aol.com> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

See: Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages & Computation by Hopcroft & Ullman.
[/quote]
How is it helpful for someone considering going into linguistics?

Guest

On Jul 15, 9:15 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 15, 7:40 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...@aol.com> wrote:

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

See: Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages & Computation by Hopcroft & Ullman.

How is it helpful for someone considering going into linguistics?
[/quote]
It doesn>t have so much to do with linguistics as it has to do with
math, if you read the OP.

And thank you Pubkeybreaker.

Angus Rodgers · Guest

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:03:08 -0700 (PDT), py.ohlin@gmail.com wrote:

[quote]I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.
[/quote]
If he>s at all into computers, the best thing might be to try to get
him interested in programming (assuming he isn>t already), after which
he might naturally come to appreciate the need for a linguistics of
computer programming languages. A nice introductory text (I>m sure
there are others - I>m out of touch with the field) is K. J. Gough,
/Syntax Analysis and Software Tools/. It>s out of print, but there
are cheap secondhand copies in good condition available from Amazon.
I mention Gough>s book particularly because it isn>t only about
compilers and interpreters, which are of specialised interest.

--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 15, 3:36 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:
[quote]On Jul 15, 9:15 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Jul 15, 7:40 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...@aol.com> wrote:

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
--
Classical Greek lent itself to the promulgation of a rich culture,
indeed, to Western civilization. Computer languages bring us
doorbells that chime with thirty-two tunes, alt.sex.bestiality, and
Tetris clones. (Stoll 1995)
[/quote]

[quote]suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

See: Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages & Computation by Hopcroft & Ullman.

How is it helpful for someone considering going into linguistics?

It doesn>t have so much to do with linguistics as it has to do with
math, if you read the OP.

And thank you Pubkeybreaker.
[/quote]
But OP asked for help with a potential linguistics major, not a math
major (indeed the person "has a hard time with math"). OP clearly
believes that becase Chomsky once did something that was influential
in math, his work and hence linguistics generally probably is
influenced by math. But that>s a faulty assumption.

Guest

On Jul 15, 11:16 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 15, 3:36 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

On Jul 15, 9:15 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Jul 15, 7:40 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...@aol.com> wrote:

On Jul 14, 11:03 pm, py.oh...@gmail.com wrote:

I>m looking for an undergraduate text on formal grammars that would be
--
Classical Greek lent itself to the promulgation of a rich culture,
indeed, to Western civilization. Computer languages bring us
doorbells that chime with thirty-two tunes, alt.sex.bestiality, and
Tetris clones. (Stoll 1995)
suitable for self-study for someone who plans to enter the field of
linguistics at university. My aim is to teach him about mathematical
thought in a way that would familiar and entertaining.

Any recommendations appreciated.

See: Introduction to Automata Theory,
Languages & Computation by Hopcroft & Ullman.

How is it helpful for someone considering going into linguistics?

It doesn>t have so much to do with linguistics as it has to do with
math, if you read the OP.

And thank you Pubkeybreaker.

But OP asked for help with a potential linguistics major, not a math
major (indeed the person "has a hard time with math"). OP clearly
believes that becase Chomsky once did something that was influential
in math, his work and hence linguistics generally probably is
influenced by math. But that>s a faulty assumption.
[/quote]
I>m trying to help him with math tbh. That>s why I x-posted, not quite
sure which category my query would fall into exactly. He does just
fine with linguistics, as far as I can tell.

You didn>t interpret the OP correctly.

James Dolan · Guest

in article <6172c080-3a31-438b-99c2-814d4771c21e@d77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
<py.ohlin@gmail.com> wrote:

|On Jul 15, 11:16 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
....
|> But OP asked for help with a potential linguistics major, not a
|> math major (indeed the person "has a hard time with math"). OP
|> clearly believes that becase Chomsky once did something that was
|> influential in math, his work and hence linguistics generally
|> probably is influenced by math. But that>s a faulty assumption.
|
|I>m trying to help him with math tbh. That>s why I x-posted, not
|quite sure which category my query would fall into exactly. He does
|just fine with linguistics, as far as I can tell.
|
|You didn>t interpret the OP correctly.

besides that, daniels>s ignorance of what mathematics is (not to
mention his monumental stupidity) makes him unqualified to make any
judgement about what work may have been influenced by it.

--

jdolan@math.ucr.edu

Guest

On Jul 16, 1:46 am, jdo...@math.UUCP (James Dolan) wrote:
[quote]in article <6172c080-3a31-438b-99c2-814d4771c...@d77g2000hsb.googlegroups..com>,

py.oh...@gmail.com> wrote:

|On Jul 15, 11:16 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
...
|> But OP asked for help with a potential linguistics major, not a
|> math major (indeed the person "has a hard time with math"). OP
|> clearly believes that becase Chomsky once did something that was
|> influential in math, his work and hence linguistics generally
|> probably is influenced by math. But that>s a faulty assumption.
|
|I>m trying to help him with math tbh. That>s why I x-posted, not
|quite sure which category my query would fall into exactly. He does
|just fine with linguistics, as far as I can tell.
|
|You didn>t interpret the OP correctly.

besides that, daniels>s ignorance of what mathematics is (not to
mention his monumental stupidity) makes him unqualified to make any
judgment about what work may have been influenced by it.
[/quote]
Well, let>s not jump to hasty conclusions.

The only complaint I have is that he seems crabby all the time for
some reason, but that doesn>t make him stupid.

Frankly, I>m not sure how much formal grammars are used practically
outside parsing—unrestricted grammars are obviously a less tidy
description of something like English. Again, that>s why I x-posted.

varma hälsningar

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 16, 9:06 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
[quote]On 2008-07-15, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Youu mean, the bit of mathematics that Chomsky apparently had some
influence on 50 years ago? Has virtually nothing to do with
linguistics today (or then, either, for that matter).

But very useful in computer science, logic, and some interdisciplinary
fields such as natural language processing.
[/quote]
But not in linguistics, which is OP>s concern and the nominal topic of
this newsgroup.

[quote]The closest you might find to mathematical formulations in linguistics
was "Montague Grammar," an attempt to meld symbolic logic with syntax/
semantics. There were a couple of textbooks on it.

"English as a formal language" in _Formal philosophy: selected papers
of Richard Montague_ (a book which I think is quite hard to find) is
the basis for trying to do compositional semantics on natural
language.
[/quote]
He was murdered by his lover before he could work out the details. (I
realized years later, long after the craze for Montague Grammar had
subsided, that he was the co-author of my undergraduate logic
textbook, Kalish & Montague.)

[quote]There>s also the obscure discipline of mathematical linguistics, which
tries to describe patterns formally, and the very popular
computational linguistics, which involves data processing applications
to just about anything.

Partee, ter Meulen, and Wall: _Mathematical methods in linguistics_,
Kluwer, 1990. I think it>s out of print but second-hand copies are
available.
[/quote]
Barbara Partee was the principal continuator of Montague Grammar. This
volume postdates those efforts, so it might receive a chapter or so.

I have only in the past two weeks had occasion to find out about
"Quantitative Linguistik," in connection with a slim new volume called
*Analyses of Script*. A _Handbuch_ of QL was published in 2006 in de
Gruyter>s series HSK. (Some of the chapters are in English.)

[quote]But I wouldn>t recommend these books for someone without reasonable
math skills!
[/quote]
You can read around the many formulas in some of the chapters and
discover what they>re talking about.

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 16, 10:58 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
[quote]In article
b44a265d-de0e-43d9-8bc0-b0b07de0d...@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com>,
"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Jul 16, 9:06 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
On 2008-07-15, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Youu mean, the bit of mathematics that Chomsky apparently had some
influence on 50 years ago? Has virtually nothing to do with
linguistics today (or then, either, for that matter).

But very useful in computer science, logic, and some interdisciplinary
fields such as natural language processing.

But not in linguistics, which is OP>s concern and the nominal topic of
this newsgroup.

And yet, many linguists are aware of formal language theory, for a
variety of reasons: simple intellectual curiosity, familiarity of the
topic from their own mathematical or computational backgrounds, and
even for its occasional use in linguistics.

"English as a formal language" in _Formal philosophy: selected papers
of Richard Montague_ (a book which I think is quite hard to find) is
the basis for trying to do compositional semantics on natural
language.

He was murdered by his lover before he could work out the details.

"Lover" seems a bit strong, implying a long-term relationship. I
thought it was generally suspected that he was killed by a one-night
stand. Did he even have a (long-term) lover at the time?
[/quote]
That>s how the gossip was presented at the time, when the wider world
paid no attention to such niceties.

António Marques · Guest

py.ohlin@gmail.com wrote:

[quote]But OP asked for help with a potential linguistics major, not a math
major (indeed the person "has a hard time with math"). OP clearly
believes that becase Chomsky once did something that was influential
in math, his work and hence linguistics generally probably is
influenced by math. But that>s a faulty assumption.

I>m trying to help him with math tbh. That>s why I x-posted, not quite
sure which category my query would fall into exactly. He does just
fine with linguistics, as far as I can tell.

You didn>t interpret the OP correctly.
[/quote]
Rather the OP didn>t express OPself in the best of manners.
From what I can make of it, after these explanations, your friend knows
linguistics well but math not so much, and you intend to present him
with a book which deals with something used in math (though one would
rather say computer science) but does so in terms used in linguistics.
But the problem is (reversing Peter>s argument) that the math in
Chomsky>s work is not necessarily well understood by the linguistics
community and its linguistics is not necessarily well understood in the
math community, so your hope that your friend>s linguistics will help
him grok the mathematical thought there may be unfounded - and
ultimately your friend may end up more confused that he is now.
Of course, all of this depends on the kind of math you>re trying to help
him with. Knowing that, probably someone who knows math and linguistics
may be in a position to point you to some math work that is especially
clearly written for someone with a linguistics background. I>m not at
all sure a book on automata cuts it.
--
António Marques
--
This signature does not include a prefab parting phrase
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **


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