natural language

A human written or spoken language as opposed to a computer language.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

natural language

1. (Linguistics) a language that has evolved naturally as a means of communication among people. Compare artificial language, formal language

2. (Linguistics) languages of this kind considered collectively

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

nat′ural lan′guage

a language used as a native tongue by a group of speakers. Compare artificial language.

[1875–80]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

natural language - a human written or spoken language used by a community; opposed to e.g. a computer language

tongue

language, linguistic communication - a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols; "he taught foreign languages"; "the language introduced is standard throughout the text"; "the speed with which a program can be executed depends on the language in which it is written"

first language, maternal language, mother tongue - one's native language; the language learned by children and passed from one generation to the next

tonal language, tone language - a language in which different tones distinguish different meanings

creole - a mother tongue that originates from contact between two languages

American-Indian language, Amerind, Amerindian language, American Indian, Indian - any of the languages spoken by Amerindians

Eskimo-Aleut, Eskimo-Aleut language - the family of languages that includes Eskimo and Aleut

Chukchi language, Chukchi - an indigenous and isolated language of unknown origin spoken by the Chukchi that is pronounced differently by men and women

Sino-Tibetan, Sino-Tibetan language - the family of tonal languages spoken in eastern Asia

Austro-Asiatic, Austro-Asiatic language, Munda-Mon-Khmer - a family of languages spoken in southern and southeastern Asia

Hmong language, Miao, Hmong - a language of uncertain affiliation spoken by the Hmong

Austronesian language, Austronesian - the family of languages spoken in Australia and Formosa and Malaysia and Polynesia

Papuan language, Papuan - any of the indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea or New Britain or the Solomon Islands that are not Malayo-Polynesian languages

Khoisan, Khoisan language - a family of languages spoken in southern Africa

Indo-European language, Indo-Hittite, Indo-European - the family of languages that by 1000 BC were spoken throughout Europe and in parts of southwestern and southern Asia

Ural-Altaic - a (postulated) group of languages including many of the indigenous languages of Russia (but not Russian)

Basque - the language of the Basque people; of no known relation to any other language

Elamitic, Susian, Elamite - an extinct ancient language of unknown affinities; spoken by the Elamites

Cassite, Kassite - an ancient language spoken by the Kassites

Caucasian language, Caucasian - a number of languages spoken in the Caucasus that are unrelated to languages spoken elsewhere

Dravidian language, Dravidic, Dravidian - a large family of languages spoken in south and central India and Sri Lanka

Afrasian, Afrasian language, Afroasiatic, Afro-Asiatic, Afroasiatic language, Hamito-Semitic - a large family of related languages spoken both in Asia and Africa

Niger-Kordofanian, Niger-Kordofanian language - the family of languages that includes most of the languages spoken in Africa south of the Sahara; the majority of them are tonal languages but there are important exceptions (e.g., Swahili or Fula)

Nilo-Saharan, Nilo-Saharan language - a family of East African languages spoken by Nilotic peoples from the Sahara south to Kenya and Tanzania

artificial language - a language that is deliberately created for a specific purpose

Translations

natürliche Sprache

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

'There was one of two ways to be adopted: either to go on to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural language which she had already commenced herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in common use: that is, to give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of letters by combination of which she might express her idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence, of any thing.

View in context

He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,--indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not become a thing.

View in context

A., (2008), Towards Building Robust Natural Language Interfaces to Databases.

Automated translation of SBVR to SQL queries

In view of wide popularity of the cloud computing technology and large development of the cloud-based natural language processing systems (i.e.

Orchestrating the natural language processing software in the cloud computing environment

This paper proposes a Natural Language Retrieval System for Data Warehouse (NLRSDW) that facilitates executives to interact with Data Warehouse in Natural Language.

A NATURAL LANGUAGE BASED RETRIEVAL SYSTEM FOR THE DATA WAREHOUSE

Natural language information hiding is depending on synonymy, movement of phrasal constituents, syntactic or semantic transformation techniques.

A hybrid natural language information hiding system

According to AndroidandMe.com, the company is planning to add a natural language processing feature to Google Voice Actions, already available on most Android phones.

Google prepping iPhone Siri rival 'Majel'

Section 2 presents the trends in the natural language processing field, especially in the semantic analysis.

Telling computers when and how to adapt processes

As I said, the author argues that mathematics, logic, and even ontology derive from the Grammar of natural language. For example: "To think logically means to practice the Grammar--the Grammar is first, then logic" (p.

Mitjashin, Alexander. The World and Language; The Ontology for Natural Language

The session was titled "Introduction to Natural Language Processing and Understanding: Enter Clinical Data the Way You Want, Capture Clinical Data the Way You Need."

Natural language processing and understanding