How Long Can a Sentence Be and Should Anyone Care?
How Long Can a Sentence Be and Should Anyone Care?
Author(s): John CollinsSubject(s): Philosophy
Published by: KruZak
Keywords: infinity; internalism; languages
Summary/Abstract: It is commonly assumed that natural languages, construed as sets of sentences, contain denumerably many sentences. One argument for this claim is that the sentences of a language must be recursively enumerable by a grammar, if we are to understand how a speaker-hearer could exhibit unbounded competence in a language. The paper defends this reasoning by articulating and defending a principle that excludes the construction of a sentence non-denumerably many words long.
Journal: Croatian Journal of Philosophy
- Issue Year: X/2010
- Issue No: 30
- Page Range: 27-35
- Page Count: 9
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF