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> Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions. If there are exceptio
by asaph 4y ago
> Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.
If there are exceptions, I would think the problem isn’t solved. Perhaps the article is being loose with the wording. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
- kuroguro 4y agoIt's also possible some of the writings have grammatical errors.
- asaph 4y agoWell how would you know that if the rules of grammar are not fully resolved?
- cenazoic 4y agoIn English, think of all the plurals for which no ‘rule of grammar’ exists; you just have to memorize them. Moose -> moose Goose -> geese House -> houses Mouse -> mice Etc.
- asaph 4y agoIn English, the exceptions to the rules are arbitrary and numerous. English is also a moving target. From a logic problem perspective, English grammar is more of a practical brute force endeavor than an interesting one. When I read the article, I was wasn’t comparing the problem to English grammar, but rather comparing it to a logic puzzle that has a perfect solution.
- somberi 4y agoCould not resist Gad Elmaleh's frustrations about learning English (he did very well to do an hour's standup in English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXR1PRbSfoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXR1PRbSfoA
- chmod775 4y agoYou're speaking a language that has some rules with almost no exceptions. But almost means one can easily list the remaining special cases.
- asaph 4y agoWhat’s the threshold of special cases allowed where the problem is considered solved?
- chmod775 4y agoThe second sentence in the comment you're replying to already answers your question. If that is not good enough, I suspect that no possible answer would prove to be satisfactory.
- asaph 4y ago“Almost” and “easily” are subjective and open to interpretation. My point is, that this is not a rigorous standard.
- chmod775 4y agoLanguages are generally not very amenable to these things. If you want to construct the entire field of linguistics mathematically that would certainly be interesting to watch. Since a function that is described by a simple equation is mathematically equivalent to a function that is described by a table assigning the appropriate values to each element of the function domain, you could try to come up with a definition for what constitutes the "optimal" way to describe a function. Do the same for any kind of relation. Until you've done so linguists will sadly be stuck applying nothing more than common sense.
- MockObject 4y agoJust a few.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
- 082349872349872 4y agoClose also counts in computation, where we routinely handle infinite (or at least combinatorially effectively so) numbers of possible inputs with a few general rules and a finite ("almost no", to use a technical term) number of exceptions.
- asaph 4y agoPerhaps my impression that this grammatical problem should be treated with logical rigor, where even a single counter-example invalidates the solution, isn’t the way this is being treated. The way it was presented in the article was like it was a kind of logic puzzle, for which an elegant solution has finally been found. Sounds like it’s more like a better rule of thumb was discovered that reduced the error rate, not to zero.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]