Essays on Linguistic Realism by Behme Christina;Neef Martin; & Martin Neef

Author:Behme, Christina;Neef, Martin; & Martin Neef [Behme, Christina & Neef, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Published: 2018-07-10T10:48:08+00:00

2.1.2Rule-following and infinity

In this section, I hope to show that realism places an added burden on linguistic theory in terms of infinity claims than do strictly physicalist frameworks. The idea that the theories of natural language are provided by rule-based grammar formalisms has held sway since the seminal Syntactic Structures (Chomsky 1957). Two related ideas informed both the inception of formal language theory and the centrality of syntax within the generative tradition in general. The first is that a language can be seen as a collection of sentences of finite length over a finite vocabulary and secondly that a grammar (viewed as a theory of language) generatively enumerates the sentences of that language. Chomsky (1959: 137) goes on to add “[s]ince any language L in which we are likely to be interested is an infinite set, we can investigate the structure of L only through the study of the finite devices (grammars) which are capable of enumerating its sentences”. The rules or functions which we specify for a given language are informed by the specific constructions of the natural language under study.

Natural languages such as English allow for iterative constructions such as those involved in conjunction, subordinate clauses and adverbial modification. Consider the examples from Pullum and Scholz (2010: 114) below.

It is evident that I exist is a declarative clause, and so is I know that I exist, and so is I know that I know that I exist; that came in and went out is a verb phrase coordination, and so is came in, turned round, and went out, and so is came in, saw us, turned round, and went out; that very nice is an adjective phrase, and so is very very nice, and so is very very very nice; and so on for many other examples and types of example.

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