SUBLANGUAGE, REGISTER AND NATURAL-LANGUAGE INTERFACES

The paper is a commentary on Karlgren (1993) which proposed the term ' register' as a substitute for the term 'sublanguage' in relation to th e study of natural language interfaces. The author proposes that this substitution is inappropriate for several reasons. First, the term 'su blanguage' has many meanings and cannot be restricted to the mathemati cal definition as Karlgren proposes. Second, terms in natural language win always be loosely defined because that is their intrinsic nature. Third, register is not a well-defined sociolinguistic term as Karlgre n suggests. Finally the author offers an alternative description of wh at a natural language 'sublanguage' is.