In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written. Natural language is distinguished from constructed languages and formal languages such as computer-programming languages or the "languages" used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic.
Read more about Natural Language: Defining Natural Language, Native Language Learning, Origins of Natural Language, Controlled Languages, Constructed Languages and International Auxiliary Languages
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or language:
“Peter: I’ll bet there isn’t a good piggy-back rider in your whole family. I never knew a rich man yet who could piggy-back ride.
Ellie: You’re prejudiced.
Peter: You show me a good piggy-backer and I’ll show you a real human. Now you take Abraham Lincoln, for instance. A natural piggy-backer.”
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)