Rules vs. lists

[Rob Freeman]

Any number at all?

How do you justify that David?

How are you generalizing your examples to abstract a rule?

-Rob

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 8:48 PM, David Tuggy <david_tuggy at sil.org> wrote:
> Any number that language users come up with, in either case. More-general
> and less-general rules, and whether or not there is one, or a set of, global
> generalizations to be made.
>
> --David Tuggy
>
> Rob Freeman wrote:
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I was glad to find the recent rule vs. list discussion. I like to see
>> fundamental issues debated.
>>
>> In line with my own particular interests I hope I can shine a new
>> perspective.
>>
>> Can anyone tell me, if the utterances of natural language are thought
>> of primarily as a list, how many ways might the elements of that list
>> be generalized to abstract one or other rule?
>>
>> That is to say, how many rules might a list of elements define in
>> principle? Also how many partial rules, if the requirement of global
>> generalizability is dropped?
>>
>> -Rob Freeman