A Strange Metapaper On Computing Natural Language

Abstract

This is a paper about writing a paper about computational creativity in natural language generation. The first part contains the second-order paper, i.e., a general explanation about the first-order paper, which constitutes the second part of the text. The embedded paper, by the same authors, contains its own abstract, keywords, and reference list. It is titled “If then or else: Who for whom about what in which”. Three actual peer reviews of that embedded paper have been integrated into the framework of the second-order paper as an attempt to illustrate the discursive and pragmatic conditions of the communicational situation of the first-order paper. This framing of one text inside another is intended to highlight the form of the paper as a specific writing constraint while using it as a self-exemplary instance of the difficulties and limitations of computing natural language. The whole metapaper is intended as a writing experiment on self-description and on linguistic creativity. Or is it just a joke?