[Corpora-List] Is a complete grammar possible (beyond thecorpus itself)?

[Rob Freeman]

John,

Are you missing the irony of this? I submit an argument that, perhaps, it is
impossible to describe natural language as a formal system, and you reject
my argument on the basis that it is impossible to describe natural language
as a formal system!

-Rob

On 9/9/07, John F. Sowa <sowa at bestweb.net > wrote:
>
> Yorick and Rob,
>
> YW> just for the record (because John cares about these things)...
>
> Computability is relevant for any kind of processing, but the issues
> of decidability and completeness are defined only for a formal system.
>
> I do not believe that the latter issues can be meaningfully applied
> to such a wildly informal system as a natural language -- perhaps to
> certain specialized uses of NLs (such as mathematical sublanguages),
> but not to the fundamental mechanisms of how people learn and use NLs.
>
> RF> You'll confuse the issue with so many words.
>
> OK.  I'll restate my point more succinctly:
>
> Trying to get deep insights into how NLs work from research in
> decidability and completeness is hopelessly misguided.
>
> John
>
>
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