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Resolving the Infinitude Controversy

2014; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 23; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s10849-014-9203-2

1572-9583

András Kornai,

Historical Linguistics and Language Studies

A simple inductive argument shows natural languages to have infinitly many sentences, but workers in the field have uncovered clear evidence of a diverse group of ‘exceptional’ languages from Proto-Uralic to Dyirbal and most recently, Pirahã, that appear to lack recursive devices entirely. We argue that in an information-theoretic setting non-recursive natural languages appear neither exceptional nor functionally inferior to the recursive majority.