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COMP 1000: Think Like a Computer: The PreTeXt Interactive Edition

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Section 1.6 Formal and Natural Languages

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Natural languages are the languages that people speak, such as English, Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese. They were not designed by people (although people try to impose some order on them); they evolved naturally.
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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:
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Programming languages are formal languages that have been designed to express computations.
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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. H₂O is a syntactically correct chemical name, but ₂Zz is not.
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Syntax rules come in two flavors, pertaining to tokens and structure. Tokens are the basic elements of the language, such as words, 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 we know). Similarly, ₂Zz is not legal because there is no element with the abbreviation Zz.
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The second type of syntax rule 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 place a plus sign immediately after an equal sign. Similarly, molecular formulas have to have subscripts after the element name, not before.
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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 subconsciously). This process is called parsing.
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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, or 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.
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Although formal and natural languages have many features in common — tokens, structure, syntax, and semantics — there are many differences:
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Glossary Glossary

ambiguity.
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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.
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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.
literalness.
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Formal languages mean exactly what they say. On the other hand, natural languages are full of idiom and metaphor. If someone says, “The other shoe fell”, there is probably no shoe and nothing falling.
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Note: You’ll need to find the original joke to understand the idiomatic meaning of the other shoe falling.
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People who grow up speaking a natural language—that is, everyone—often have a hard time adjusting to formal languages. In some ways, the difference between natural and formal language is like the difference between poetry and prose, but more so:
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Glossary Glossary

poetry.
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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.
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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.
program.
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The meaning of a computer program is unambiguous and literal, and can be understood entirely by analysis of the tokens and structure.
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Here are some suggestions for reading programs (and other formal languages). First, remember that formal languages are much more dense 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, the details matter. Little things like indentation, spelling errors and bad punctuation, which you can get away with in natural languages, can make a big difference in a formal language.
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Check your understanding
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Checkpoint 1.6.1.

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    The differences between natural and formal languages include:
  • Natural languages can be parsed while formal languages cannot.
  • Actually both languages can be parsed (determining the structure of the sentence), but formal languages can be parsed more easily in software.
  • Elements such as ambiguity, redundancy, and literalness.
  • All of these can be present in natural languages, but cannot exist in formal languages.
  • There are no differences between natural and formal languages.
  • There are several differences between the two but they are also similar.
  • Elements such as tokens, structure, syntax, and semantics.
  • These are the similarities between the two.
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Checkpoint 1.6.2.

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    True or False: Reading a program is like reading other kinds of text.
  • True
  • It usually takes longer to read a program because the structure is as important as the content and must be interpreted in smaller pieces for understanding.
  • False
  • It usually takes longer to read a program because the structure is as important as the content and must be interpreted in smaller pieces for understanding.
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