[OT] fortran lib which provide python like data type

Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Sun Feb 1 11:49:44 EST 2015


Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> The natural language has a rigorous grammar plus a lexicon that includes
> a number of idioms. Nobody has so far been able to codify a natural
> language completely because the rigorous grammar consists of maybe
> 10,000 rules.

If nobody has codified the rigorous grammar, how do they know it is
rigorous?

Given how natural languages are constantly in flux (in both space and time),
I don't even know how you could define all the rules of a grammar
rigorously. By the time you finished, it would be different.

Of course, some rules are more rigorous than others. No English speaker
would consider a sentence like

    Can me cheeseburger has?

as grammatical. But how about:

    I can has cheezburger?

If grammar is defined by usage, not formal rule books (which don't exist!),
then surely LOLspeak is grammatical. (It's probably closer to an argot than
a full language, but even so.)




-- 
Steven




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