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A communication language should be layered in a way that fits well with other systems. In particular, a distinction should be made between the communication language, which expresses communicative acts, and the content language, which expresses facts about the domain. Such layering facilitates the successful integration of the language to applications while providing a conceptual framework for the understanding of the language.

The language should commit to a well defined set of communicative acts (primitives). Although this set could be extensible, a core of primitives that capture most of our intuitions about what constitutes a communicative act irrespective of application (database, object-oriented system, knowledge base, etc.) will ensure the usability of the language by a variety of systems. The choice of the core set of primitives also relates to the decision of whether to commit to a specific content language. A commitment to a content language allows for a more restricted set of communicative acts because it is then possible to carry more information at the content language level. The disadvantage is that all applications must then use the same content language; this is a heavy constraint.

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