Automated methods for the comparison of natural languages

Abstract

Starting from the general question, if there is a connection between the mathematical capabilities of a student and his native language, we aim at comparing natural languages with mathematical language quantitatively. In [20] we set up an approach to compare language structures using Natural Language Processors (NLP). However, difficulties arose with the quality of the structural analysis of the NLP used just comparing simple sentences in different but closely related natural languages. We now present a comparison of different available NLPs and discuss the results. The comparison confirms the results from [20], showing that current NLPs are not capable of analysing even simple sentences such that resulting structures between different natural languages can be compared.