Abstract
A sublanguage is a subset of a natural language such as the English language. Sublanguages tend to emerge gradually through the use of a language in various fields by specialists in those fields. Some such sublanguages are the ‘language of biophysics’ and the ‘language of naval telegraphic transmissions’. This paper explores whether English-language comments in object-oriented software can be considered to be a sublanguage of English, using standard criteria for sublanguage determination. To make this determination, the article looks at the grammatical content of comments, including: sentence-style comments versus non-sentence-style comments, and the use of tense, mood, and voice in sentence-style comments. The telegraphic nature of comments is also examined. Additionally, the subject-matter of comments is analyzed in terms of the purpose of comments in describing the operation of computer software.
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