世界是一座通天塔①,三十亿人讲着数百种语言,这些语言对这些人中的大多数来说都是听不懂的。然而一切语言有着某些基本的共同结构性质,正象原子内部的电子都有轨道,人都有两只眼睛和两只耳朵一样。数理语言学是一门正在美国和苏联兴起的新的学科,它试图分析这些基本的结构性质。它有希望被直接应用于语义学和计算机程序。最终它可能导致使用计算机作科学文献的信息处理和作语言翻译。 The world is a Tower of Babel. Three billion people speak hundreds of languages ​​that most of these people do not understand. However, all languages ​​have some basic common structural properties, just as the electrons in an atom have orbits, and each has two eyes and two ears. Mathematical linguistics is a new discipline that is emerging in the United States and the Soviet Union. It tries to analyze these basic structural features. It has hope to be directly applied to semantics and computer programs. Eventually it may lead to the use of computers for information processing and linguistic translation of scientific literature.