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    The set of utterances in a language should not be regarde... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    The set of utterances in a language should not be regarded as finite

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Insisting on a finite language would require including highly arbitrary and numerical conditions in the grammar
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    • 2.A grammar should be set up in an uncluttered and maximally elegant way
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Human cognitive and physical constraints entail that any actual language use is bounded by finite biological lifespans and memory limits.
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    • 2.A theory of language should model the actual communicative capacities of finite beings, not idealized abstract systems divorced from cognitive reality.
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    • 3.Chomsky's competence/performance distinction does not justify positing infinite sets when performance data is necessarily finite and bounded.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Elegance and parsimony in grammar are aesthetic-pragmatic criteria for theory selection, not metaphysical facts about the nature of language.
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    • 2.Preferring infinite generative grammars on grounds of elegance commits the fallacy of mistaking theoretical convenience for ontological commitment about what language is.
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    Philosophy of Language

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    Related

    A grammar should be set up in an uncluttered and maximally elegant wayA theory of language should model the actual communicative capacities of finite ...Chomsky's competence/performance distinction does not justify positing infinite ...Elegance and parsimony in grammar are aesthetic-pragmatic criteria for theory se...
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    Human cognitive and physical constraints entail that any actual language use is ...Insisting on a finite language would require including highly arbitrary and nume...Preferring infinite generative grammars on grounds of elegance commits the falla...

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    Human language does not necessarily yield a potentially infinite array...79%Śabda can alternatively denote language as such — the conditions of po...78%If the set of valid sentences of a language L is not definable in a si...78%The set of valid sentences of most infinite quantifier languages is no...78%

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    SEP: linguistics
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    Similarly, Externalists are interested in the linguistic structure of expressions, but have little use for the idea of a discrete infinity of them, a view that is not, and cannot be empirically supported, unless one thinks of simplicity and elegance of theory as empirical matters. They focus on the outward manifestations of language, not on a set of expressions regarded as a whole language—at least not in any way that would give a language a definite cardinality. Zellig Harris, an archetypal Ext
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    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit