Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 19, Issue 1, 1984

The professional mathematician employs in his writings a special language, which we call 'the language of mathematics'. It has two components: on the one hand (a fragment of) natural language, and on the other hand a highly specialized artificial language. The latter part attracts the eye in a mathematical text, because of its deviating form: it contains symbols, formulae and the like.Yet almost all peculiarities of mathematical language, including those of the artificial part, can be embedded in the usual natural language frame. This different appearance of mathematical language originates from a mathematicians urge for efficiency, clarity and compactness.A noteworthy advantage of mathematical language is found in its treatment of coreferences. The artificial part of mathematical language employs a highly developed reference mechanism, called binding. A formula like 'εxIR(x > x2)' for instance, contains a bound variable 'x' of which only the category (viz. the set of real numbers) is fixed. The variable 'x' can be replaced by another one without changing the meaning of the formula: 'yε IR(y > y2)'.This mechanism of binding makes all kinds of referential words, as used in natural language (such as relative pronouns), superfluous.Mathematical language is still in full development. Especially at the word and word group level, many interesting linguistic features can be observed. At the sentence and text level, however, mathematical language is not very revolutionary. Here improvements are possible, and some of these are proposed in the article.

It is observed that certain key words in a physics text may have a far more precise meaning than in everyday usage. The more precise meaning often arises through metaphor or by borrowing from a more primitive physics. Examples are given from quantummechanics and general relativity. The coining of neologisms and acronyms is mentioned. An account is given of the physics journal system, of the languages used and of the dominant position of English. Finally the retroaction of this position of English on the quality of the Dutch used by Dutch physicists is discussed.

This paper presents an overview of the Natural Language Technology Project which is being carried out at the University of Nijmegen since the end of 1982. A sketch of the project's main goals is followed by a description of the state-of-the-art as of March 1984. The principles underlying the design of the various linguistic modules (morphological and syntactic parsers, morphological and syntactic generators, a large lexical database, an object-oriented knowledge representation system based on LISP) are explained. An integrated design is proposed for a natural language dialogue system sharing many components with an "author system", i.e., with a software tool capable of assisting authors in preparing and editing documents on the basis of built-in linguistic knowledge.

In the fifties and sixties a great deal of money and time was spent on the development of automatic translation systems. Because of the meagre results and sombre perspectives all large scale research projects were abandoned. The eighties show a renewed interest in the field of automatic translating. It is, therefore, a valid question whether old problems have been solved and new perspectives have been uncovered. A critical analysis shows that progress has been made in the domains of hardware (speed of data processing and data storage) and the organisation of data. The basic linguis-tic problems have not, however, been solved.Linguistic research that is not first and foremost directed at descriptive (instead of representational) problems and at fundamental problems such as the relation between syntax, semantics and knowledge of the world is subject to the same fate as the research into automatic translating in the fifties.

Within the Dutch software house BSO, a 14-months study for the European Commission has been performed on the feasibility of DLT: Distributed Language Translation, a semi-automatic, multilingual translation system.This project, in cooperation with a number of experts from universities in several EC-counties, resulted in a report that found its way to science and industry.DLT is an interlingual system, as opposed to the transfer system EUROTRA. Whereas the interface of the latter, apart from a one-to-one lexical substitution as its transfer, heavily leans on semantic information in the form of abstract formatives such as 'agent','patient', DLT's Intermediate Language (IL), having the form of natural language, gives the advantage of an IL-dictionary at both sides of the dividing-line between Source Language (SL) and Target Language (TL): the translation can profit intensively from valency information.As a compromise between the ambiguous character of natural language and the need of an effective IL to be sufficiently similar to natural languages, DLT has adopted as its IL a modified subset of an artificial language that is less ambiguous than natural languages, especially on the syntactical level: a good starting point to further reduction of this problem. As opposed to e.g. the batch-oriented system SYSTRAN, DLT's networked correspondence of SL/IL/TL with its outside operational environment links up with hardware developments. This is also true of the computer-initiated interactive disambiguation dialogue during source text entry instead of traditional post-editing.The graduates' unemployment of Faculties of Arts is relatively high. Nevertheless, a report, published by the Arts Section of the Dutch Academic Council by the end of 1983, suggests employment possibilities in sectors other than education, e.g.: language projects in the software industry and information technology. As the actual machine translation market in the USA shows, there may be some hope for these graduates. Perhaps a more flexible way of study programming in Faculties of Arts may help to find these ways.

The transborder flow of data and informational services increases at a much higher rate (20% per annum) than the national telecommunication and broadcast traffic. However, ensuring that all the new satellite channels, mobile networks and telematics services provide intelligible and useful information to their users is not merely a technical matter.Clearly, new professional opportunities arise for, amongst others, linguists and interpreters, both in research and development of new and better information systems, and in their application in society.

In this paper the follwing topics are dealt with1. lexicon vs. grammar dictionaries2. lexical selection in dictionaries3. general vs. special dictionaries4. frequency of lexical items5. central vs. peripheral items6. contrastive lexicology7. user-orientation in dictionairiesAll examples are taken from the new English Van Dale (English-Dutch).

Foreign Language speaking negotiators in the business-world experience problems in finding the proper and diplomatic way to end a conversation or to change the theme of the conversation. Before trying to find the specific linguistic problems of the foreign language speaker, we want to describe how participants end both a theme and the whole conversation. In this paper we will show how the repetition of something that has already been said during the theme-treatment opens up the negotiation for a theme-ending.

A map of the world of 'technical' communication shows the (a, ß)-universe, flat country filled with language experts and scientists, including engineers. In the centre Technical Writing is situated, a territory in turmoil, on the border of α-land and ß-land. In the U.S.A. the territory is developing fast as the professional core of a new skill. As emigrants, many people of an α-type or ß-type nature end up in the territory. Having a problem of professional identity they possess a hy-brid personality. The attention paid to this problem causes them to lose sight of the two 'natural' forces of an emigrating individual, that is to say feedforward — an anticipative composition principle — and metaphoric transfer — 'as-if use of knowledge from the individual's professional past, to solve the communication problems met at present. Feedforward (Ivor A. Richards, 1893-1979) is a principle of creative action, proceeding from more generic to less (a top-down hier-archy); a number of 'formators' (Charles W. Morris and Bess Sondel), the tools for making text according to the feedforward scheme, are discussed. Nowadays visual elements as formators receive more emphasis. Text is seen as a distribution of three types of elements ('knowing', 'feeling', 'acting') glued into a unit, the communicative 'whole', by the formators. The textual whole should match the type of readers as originally anticipated by the technical writer (27 types, a classification based upon estimating three levels of knowing, feeling, acting; examples are included). Some prescriptions for solving Technical Writing problems found by metaphoric transfer are discussed. To illustrate the traffic of ideas arising from metaphoric transfer, a detailed map of the border area science/ technical writing is shown.

An analysis of Shell's 'public image' shows that this company (a) controls most of the factors which determine this image, and (b) invests much time, money and energy in influencing those factors which are beyond direct control. Creating and maintaining a positive public image seems to outweigh direct product-centered promotional activities.In relation to this, external communication is considered a very important 'image-building' aspect of the total company-strategy. A writing course for future managers should - under certain constraints - take this into account, and place heavy emphasis on the psychological effects of style variables.

The question in the title is ambigous. The first interpretation is: what are they capable of? This question is answered in a brief sketch of the curriculum of the study of linguistic communication at Utrecht University.The second interpretation is: what job opportunities do organisa-tions offer these graduates? This question is answered in a survey of the functions which are or may be fulfilled by graduated linguistic ummunication experts. These questions are discussed especially with regard to policy reports.

Many organizations use a very formal, legally coloured jargon for internal communications (insurance companies, government organisations, etc.)Problems arise when they have to communicate with laymen. The topmanagement recognizes these problems and employs communication experts in order to teach correspondents to write in a client oriented way.The correspondents take up four lines of defence:- the problems do not lie with us, but with the client,- technically it is not possible to formulate in such a way that the client understands it,- the department manager will not allow us to spend the extra time or he won't accept it,- we can't do it.In this paper I elaborate on this practical sketch, giving my views on the question in how far the lines of defence (should) hold. In addition I indicate what conclusions one can draw from this sketch as to the way in which this process of change may be conducted and what is required of the communication expert.

A taxonomy of ESP Courses by Peter Strevens is used to classify eight requests for cooperation received in a single day by the author, director of a teaching institute for translators. The classification shows that there is a need for a great variety of ESP courses. Especially jurists, economists, engineers and medical men often have to appeal to 'mediators' in cases in which they should be able to use the foreign language themselves. Unfortunately the need for this tool is not recognized in their initial training.

The College of Technology student is trained to use technology in practice. In his profession he is society orientated, and his language education should be so too. At this level it is for the first time that languages are no longer an aim in themselves, but that they have the function of serving professional needs. The task of the (foreign) language teacher is to relate language to technology, in order to make its relevance clear.The student should be given insight into the communicative skills which he will need in his professional life. The qualified engineer can expect to have to write reports, letters and summaries, or to give these verbally in both his own as well as in other languages. He may also need to conduct sales talks and give work instructions to those who use a second language as a mutual means of communication. A good vocational language course should prepare him for these activities.But who should instruct the College of Technology student in these various communicative skills? An engineer with interest in language, or a linguist who, in the most favourable instance, has some interest in technology?In practice every teacher does his best according to his own insight into the professional requirements of engineers. A carefully balanced training in the combination of language and technology does not (yet) exist, but the need for this and the interest in combined initiatives is growing.

The aim of the authors is to provide some examples of how a teacher could develop his own material in order to optimalize his teaching and meet the needs of the learners.With a concrete example of a course for Dutch speaking business-men (see NOTE : (1)) we show how teaching material may be developed through a permanent interaction between the language teachers and representatives of a professional group. LANGUAGE AND PROFESSION should not only meet in the last (teaching) phase but at the very beginning of the project and throughout every step of the preparation of the course.The article deals with the following questions:1,- how can one find out about the needs ? (Table 1 shows - for French - which are the linguistic competences considered as "useful or essential")2.- what aspects should be treated first ? (Table 2 shows the relationship between some professional categories (our target group) and the functions they use.)3.- with what pedagogical forms kan one reach the objectives ? With practical examples of lessons, we try to define the approach selected.In short, this material is not to be seen as an alternative to existing material but as supplementary material dealing with the "gaps" which have been detected.