How Language Relates to Computation

Abstract

Language has a way of folding itself in representations of form and meaning which can be sequenced, stored, compared, altered and thus manipulated. And it is computation that may well underlie and hence underpin such operations. For the simple reason that linguistic representations have to be combined and also altered to build larger and larger structures, we need an operation that does this job, that is, an operation that manipulates representations of form and meaning in different sorts of ways the contributions of which are relevant to the construction of linguistic structures. It is this role that computation takes up. It is computation that assumes utmost significance when we require operations on representations of form and meaning to build linguistic structures in consonance with all constraints that apply to relations of linguistic form and meaning. However, it needs to be emphasized that such operations may obtain either in digital computers that we use in our everyday life or in human brains. And a lot, in fact, depends on where we believe linguistic operations can obtain, as any choice that we exert ourselves to make concerning this matter has wider ramifications for the way language really works. One obvious way of having computational operations apply to representations of form and meaning is to build tools for the processing of natural language(s) in computers.