A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HUMAN AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: MORPHO-SEMANTIC APPROACH

Abstract

Linguistics has crossed path with many other disciplines, one of these disciplines is computer science. Linguistics and computer science share many common areas of interest and methods of inquiry, particularly when it comes to studying languages - both natural human languages in the case of linguistics, and artificial programming languages in the case of computer science. The overlap between the two fields is that both are concerned with the structure, meaning, processing and evolution of languages. Linguistics studies this for natural languages, while computer science examines it for programming languages. The computer scientists/programming language developers have made many efforts to harmonise human language with computer language. Their intention for doing this is to make computer language accessible to all - non-computer scientists. This effort has yielded little results. For over sixty years, linguists and computer scientists have tried to bridge the gap between human and computer languages. The aim of this work is to bridge this gap, thereby demystifying computer language from linguistics perspective so that it can become more accessible to the layman. This work attempted a morpho-semantic comparison of human and selected computer programming languages. This paper therefore investigates morphological similarities and differences between human and computer languages and semantics similarities and differences between human and computer languages. A model developed by the researchers, that compares human lexes with computer lexes and human meaning with computer meaning, is developed for the data analysis. Also, data were as well subjected to human language analytical tools, which involve morphological concepts and semantic model of Jerroid Katz (1970). Twelve (12) computer programming language statements were selected from BASIC and C computer languages from Salau K. K. et al (2002 & 2005). The morphological tools employed include: free and bound morpheme, compounding, clitics, acronym, blends, and back-formation. The Katzian model of generative semantics as reviewed by Saeed (2006) and Geeraets (2010) are employed .The analysis reveals that computer language lexes are the abbreviation, compression, or reduction of human language. This shortening of human language lexes in computer language is achieved through the use of both conventional morphological and pseudo-morphological processes. The semantic analysis shows that the meanings of computer language lexes relate to human language; while some are extension/narrowing of human language, some lexes have different meanings from that of human language entirely. This study has shown that computer language could be learnt or studied from the point of view of human language; hence linguistic tools are veritable means of studying and learning of computer language.