Infinite Uses → Finite Means

Post   : Infinite Uses → Finite Means
URL    : http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/04/17/infinite-uses-%e2%86%92-finite-means/
Posted : April 17, 2013 at 11:00 pm

| The idea that a language is based on a system of rules determining the
| interpretation of its infinitely many sentences is by no means novel.
| Well over a century ago, it was expressed with reasonable clarity by
| Wilhelm von Humboldt in his famous but rarely studied introduction
| to general linguistics (Humboldt, 1836).  His view that a language
| “makes infinite use of finite means” and that its grammar must
| describe the processes that make this possible is, furthermore,
| an outgrowth of a persistent concern, within rationalistic
| philosophy of language and mind, with this “creative”
| aspect of language use.  (Chomsky, 1965, p. v).

⁂

| Although it was well understood that linguistic processes are in some sense “creative”,
| the technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes were simply not
| available until much more recently.  In fact, a real understanding of how a language
| can (in Humboldt's words) “make infinite use of finite means” has developed only
| within the last thirty years, in the course of studies in the foundations of
| mathematics.  (Chomsky, 1965, p. 8).

Noam Chomsky (1965), ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'', MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

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