Natural languages are the
languages that people speak, like English, Spanish, and French. They
were not designed by people (although people try to impose some order
on them); they evolved naturally.
Formal languages are
languages that are designed by people for specific applications. For
example, the notation that mathematicians use is a formal language that
is particularly good at denoting relationships among numbers and
symbols. Chemists use a formal language to represent the chemical
structure of molecules. And most importantly: Programming languages are
formal languages that have been designed to express computations.
As I mentioned before, formal languages tend to have strict rules about
syntax. For example, 3+3 = 6 is a syntactically correct mathematical
statement, but 3 = +6$ is not. Also, H
2
O is a syntactically correct chemical name, but
2
Zz is not.
Syntax rules come in two flavors, pertaining to tokens and structure.
Tokens are the basic elements of the language, like words and numbers
and chemical elements. One of the problems with 3=+6$ is that $ is not
a legal token in mathematics (at least as far as I know). Similarly,
2
Zz is not legal because there is no element with the abbreviation Zz.
The second type of syntax
error pertains to the structure of a statement; that is, the way the
tokens are arranged. The statement 3=+6$ is structurally illegal,
because you can’t have a plus sign immediately after an equals sign.
Similarly, molecular formulas have to have subscripts after the element
name, not before.
When you read a sentence
in English or a statement in a formal language, you have to figure out
what the structure of the sentence is (although in a natural language
you do this unconsciously). This process is called parsing.
For example, when you hear
the sentence, “The other shoe fell,” you understand that “the other
shoe” is the subject and “fell” is the verb. Once you have parsed a
sentence, you can figure out what it means, that is, the semantics of
the sentence. Assuming that you know what a shoe is, and what it means
to fall, you will understand the general implication of this sentence.
Although formal and
natural languages have many features in common – tokens, structure,
syntax and semantics – there are many differences.
A
mbiguity: Natural languages are full of ambiguity, which people deal
with by using contextual clues and other information. Formal languages
are designed to be nearly or completely unambiguous, which means that
any statement has exactly one meaning, regardless of context
Redundancy: In order to make up for ambiguity and reduce
misunderstandings, natural languages employ lots of redundancy. As a
result, they are often verbose. Formal languages are less redundant and
more concise.
L
iteralness: Natural languages are full of idiom and metaphor. If I say,
“The other shoe fell,” there is probably no shoe and nothing falling.
Formal languages mean exactly what they say.
People who grow up
speaking a natural language (everyone) often have a hard time adjusting
to formal languages. In some ways the difference between formal and
natural language is like the difference between poetry and prose, but
more so:
Poetry: Words are used for their sounds as well as for their meaning,
and the
whole poem together creates an effect or emotional response. Ambiguity
is not only common but
often deliberate.
Prose: The literal meaning
of words is more important and the structure contributes more meaning.
Prose is more amenable to analysis than poetry, but still often
ambiguous.
Programs: The meaning of a computer program is unambiguous and literal,
and can be understood entirely by analysis of the tokens and structure.
Here are some suggestions for reading programs (and other formal
languages). First, remember that formal languages are much denser than
natural languages, so it takes longer to read them. Also, the structure
is very important, so it is usually not a good idea to read from top to
bottom, left to right. Instead, learn to parse the program in your
head, identifying the tokens and interpreting the structure. Finally,
remember that the details matter. Little things like spelling errors
and bad punctuation, which you can get away with in natural languages,
can make a big difference in a formal language.
For writing complex programs, it is often useful to first write a draft
version of the program in a natural language and use this version of
the program, called pseudo code
, to develop the basic program flow. The natural language program can
then be rewritten in the formal computer language, with careful
attention paid to correct syntax. Examples of this approach will be
given later in this document.
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