"What, a new article by Roland? What did he say this time?"
"An analytical tool for grammar and semantics this time?"
"Segmentation, classification, analysis... linguistics really is arcana, not witchcraft!"
As the rumors spread, related discussions swiftly swept through Nevis City.
Roland came from the information age, after computers had become widely used in human society. In that era, language research had gained another branch: computational linguistics.
Computational linguistics referred to the use of formal mathematical models to analyze and process natural language, implementing those processes through computer programs.
Its purpose was to use machines to simulate some or even all of humanity's linguistic abilities.
In a sense, this capacity for modeling, analysis, and processing transcended races, nations, and civilizations.
It returned to the essence of symbolic representation.
At this level, the sciences, humanities, and language itself achieved a high degree of unity.
This was language's ultimate form: a symbolic model of thought.
Of course, even some of the research on Blue Star in his previous life had only just begun.
Artificial intelligence had not yet developed to the point of fully simulating human conversation.
But this world had magic, as well as nonhuman intelligences such as tower spirits.
Everyone thus discovered, to their surprise, that this framework could improve tower spirits' linguistic functions.
Not only that, it could also improve specific spells.
For example, "Tongues"!
Since the arcane era, these basic lower-tier spells had also seen widespread use and attention.
Even Swein and the others could not resist asking around, hoping to find out whether the paper was genuine.
Swein contacted Roland directly, asking him in an email.
"Did you really write that article? To be frank, I've recently been researching improvements to a translation-related spell, hoping to incorporate it into the model for 'Tongues,' but I've been lacking