Yes, that very much falls under the area of interest! And following one of the Wikipedia citation links:

Among his [Backus's] library at the time were the works of the modern philosopher and theorist Noam Chomsky, who studied the evolution of the human intellect and of written and spoken language in parallel. Chomsky was developing a symbolic syntax with which to frame his concepts of languages within languages, in the study of how sociology affects grammar. Backus borrowed some of Chomsky's concepts, including the idea that a symbology could represent a computer language...even one that didn't yet exist.

So again, it all seems to point back to Noam Chomsky. I do have a copy of Chomsky's _Aspects of the Theory of Syntax_ coming to my home soon. Should be interesting.