Timeline for Is Language infinite?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
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| Jan 19, 2016 at 21:14 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | You keep criticizing a point I'm not making.I am NOT saying that language is or is not infinite. I am saying that it does not need to be to preserve the linguistic creativity which the argument was devised to be. Nor am I proposing that language is defined by all the sentences ever created in it. All I am saying is that the generative rules proposed by Chomsky do not need to be capable of generating an infinite number of sentences. I don't think defining language as a set of words and rules to generate sentences is any more theoretically virtuous, though. But that's beside the point. | |
| Jan 19, 2016 at 14:41 | comment | added | Greg Lee | We will only ever need to use a finite number of the integers; therefore, the number of integers is finite. This argument uses your reasoning. However, we know that the number of integers is not finite. So your reasoning must be incorrect. | |
| Jan 19, 2016 at 7:39 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | ...cont. This means that 1 billion people could say 1 sentence per second each and not run out of new things to say for 3 * 10^232 years. This number does not diminish appreciably even if you say that only 0.001% of all possible combinations are grammatical. | |
| Jan 19, 2016 at 7:35 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | @GregLee As a thought experiment. Imagine a language with a million words and an upper limit on a sentence usable by a human of 100 words (a very generous one). And the number of sentences you need to generate is 9.95 * 10 to the power of 599 (see wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000%21+%2F+999900%21). That's a pretty big number - but very much finite. A more realistic language of 100k words with a 50 word limit on a sentence gives you 9.88 x 10^249 possible sentences. Of course, lets say only 10% are grammatical, which still gives you 10^249. Cont. | |
| Jan 19, 2016 at 7:14 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | @GregLee That wasn't my argument. I was saying that a grammar does not need to generate an infinite number of sentences because the total amount of sentences ever uttered in any language by all speakers over all time will be finite. It just needs to be very (but very much countably) large. Plus, if you achieve infinity through recursion, most of that infinity of sentences will be incomprehensible to humans. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 23:35 | comment | added | Greg Lee | The argument that language must be finite because only a finite number of its sentences can have been observed assumes the absurd identification of a language with those of its sentences that have been used so far. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 23:00 | history | edited | Gaston Ümlaut | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Spelling correction
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| Aug 20, 2014 at 0:23 | comment | added | jlawler | For Deixis, see Fillmore's Deixis Lectures. | |
| Aug 15, 2014 at 19:58 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | @babou Sorry, 'deixing' was a misspelling of 'deixis' (constructions used for pointing or demonstrating something external to speech - like this, that, there, etc.) Re rules vs. unification: In some sense, unification can be easily translated into a rule-based system. But fundamentally, I use 'unification' to refer to a set of approaches (including. construction and cognitive grammar) that stress the importance of compatibility of elements in an expression over the generations of that expression from a vocabulary using a set of words. This allows them to account for idioms and the like. | |
| Aug 15, 2014 at 19:54 | history | edited | Dominik Lukes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fixed the spelling of 'deixis'
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| Aug 12, 2014 at 9:05 | comment | added | babou | What is "deixing"? Is it a misspelling of "indexing" ? Google does not know it. - - - - Can you explain your opposition between rules theory and unification (this is not a naive question)? | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 20:54 | comment | added | babou | About the note. It is always difficult to decide whether nonsense should be ignored, or whether it should be refuted at the risk of being advertized. The author of the paper, which I have not read yet, wrote it to refute nonsense. Maybe the paper should be advertised as much as possible without advertising the nonsense. For some reason, this reminds me of creationism. Whenever you saw, you should worry about what you reap. | |
| Aug 6, 2014 at 23:55 | history | edited | hippietrail | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fmt; nor -> not; don't use just "this" or "here" for links
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| Aug 6, 2014 at 23:54 | comment | added | hippietrail | If you're going to bring in the heat death of the universe as cutting short language completing its job of enumerating its full large finite set of things it can say, then you must also bring in the possibility of a plurality of universes in a multiverse containing other language users so that one universe ceasing would not cease all language. All philosophy, no linguistics. Of course. | |
| Aug 6, 2014 at 23:49 | history | edited | hippietrail | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 6, 2014 at 19:45 | history | answered | Dominik Lukes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |