Language and Recognition

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Many people when they are only partially occupied will doodle on a piece of paper, drawing pictures or complex shapes and maybe even writing down notes in words of things which pass through their mind. Such doodles are generally not considered a language. There is very little intent to convey meaning, except perhaps in the notes. In contrast, the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids are also covered in pictures and these are not doodles. They are writing that attempt to convey very important meanings. These pictures are a language.

So, how does one distinguish the doodles on a pad from the language on the pyramids. First, the language attempts to contain and convey meaning. Now, since most of us read neither Egyptian nor Mayan, we cannot extract the meaning of the writing on the pyramids, but it is still there.

But, even if we cannot extract the meaning from the writing on the pyramids one can still distinguish Egyptian hieroglyphs from Mayan ones. They simply look different.

This brings us to our first task, recognition. Recognition is simply the act of saying whether something is written in the language or not. Thus, if we look at a set of symbols on a pad, we can recognize whether they are Egyptian hieroglyphs or not and give a yes/no answer to that question.

An analogous process can be applied to the bits stored in a computer. These bits can be organized into symbols. The symbols can then be looked at to see if they look like a language and it they are recognized as looking like a language we can say "yes" they appear to be writing and not just doodles.

If the bits in a computer are a writing in a language, we can then attempt to extract the meaning that the writing conveys. This is our grand goal. However, we start with the simplest question first, do we recognize the symbols as language.

next: Languages Are Defined By A Grammar