What Is Language?

Don’t Be Silly I have recently plowed through the new book by Berwick & Chomsky summarizing their long held views of language. One point they never tire of mentioning is what they call language’s Basic Property, complete with capital letters: “language is a finite computational system yielding an infinity of expressions.” For the moment, I’m going to accept that claim, because the important thing to notice is not whether the definition is true or false but that it is ridiculous. Let’s list a few other “computational systems” that have the same property: Vision is a finite computational system yielding an infinity of images. A biological cell is a finite computational system yielding an infinity of organisms. The equation X = n+1 is a finite computational system yielding an infinity of numbers. There are perhaps an infinity of examples I could generate, but only the algebraic example gets at the essence of whatever I am trying to define. In the other cases it is distracting to call them “computational systems.” Even if we are trying to model vision, or cells, or language on a computer—and thus reduce it to something computable—we still need to remember that the computational part is not the essential property. If we are trying to construct a visual system, for example, we are trying to create something that can use light to recognize its environment. If it works well, it will automatically be able to generate the limitless number of imag...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Source Type: blogs