A statement in a spoken language may be regarded as a one-dimensional string of symbols used to communicate an idea from the speaker to a listener. The dimensionality of the statement is limited by the need for presenting words in a single time sequence. However, evidence indicates that most information and ideas are not stored by people in one-dimensional arrays isomorphic to these linear strings. This implies that a speaker must use certain complex information manipulating processes to transform the stored information to a linear output string, and that a listener, in order to "understand" the speaker, must use another set of processes to decode this linear string. In order for communication to take place, the information map of both the listener and the speaker must be approximately the same, at least for the universe of discourse.

Article based on Ph.D. dissertation at Carnegie Tech. "... the problem of meaning is of major importance in the study of the nature of intelligence, and that a useful definition of meaning must include not only denotation but connotation and implication as well. To handle these important questions it is necessary to study cognitive organizations which are more complex than those upon which most psychological theories are based. A central question is the storage of large numbers of interrelated propositions in a manner which efficiently uses memory capacity." In E.A. Feigenbaum & J. Feldman (Eds.) Computers and Thought, pp. 217-233. McGraw-Hill, 1963.

Men typically communicate with computers in a variety of artificial,stylized, unambiguous languages that are better adapted to the machinethan to the man. For convenience and speed, many future computercenteredsystems will require men to communicate with computers innatural language. The business executive, the military commander, and thescientist need to ask questions of the computer in ordinary English, andto have the computer answer the questions directly. Baseball is a first steptoward this goal.Proc. Western Joint Computer Conference 19:555-570.

The Journal of Symbolic Logic (JSL) was founded in 1936 and it has become the leading research journal in the field. Volume 71, being published during 2006, will consist of approximately 1300 pages. The Journal is distributed with The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. The Journal and The Bulletin are the official organs of the Association for Symbolic Logic, an international organization for supporting research in symbolic logic and furthering the exchange of ideas among mathematicians, philosophers, computer scientists, linguists, and others interested in this field. The main purpose of The Journal is to publish original scholarly work in symbolic logic.