AN ALGORITHMIC THEORY OF LANGUAGE

Abstract
The Algorithmic Theory of Language takes the view that processing algorithms define classes of language. A language belongs to a class depending upon whether or not it is properly processed by the corresponding algorithm. Following preliminary statement of n-component element and plex definitions, several general principles concerning the step-by-step growth of large, complex structures are introduced. The words and symbols of language are then considered to be elements with attractive and repulsive properties which cause them to link together to form linguistic structures. The general principles are applied to suitable element definitions to yield derivations of successively more elaborate algorithms defining the behavior of these elements, and generating in one left-to-right pass the FirstPass Structure which explicitly exhibits the syntactic and semantic structure of a statement by showing syntactic context by a tree structure and semantic context by the ''precedence string.'' The present development stops with the concepts of major and minor modifiers and leaves ambiguity resolution and other topics to future papers.

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