By this I mean that language is a communicative capability of living organisms that has evolved from deep biological roots and from social interactions over millions, and ultimately, billions of years.
I claim that language is not logical and mathematical, because that's not the nature of the organism (us) that exhibits the language capability.
An example of this is found in our vocabularies. A technically skilled adult will have a vocabulary of over 100,000 words, basically all memorized. The meaning of "bear" or "ship" does not follow from the characters that make them up. We simply commit them to memory. Linguists would like us to believe that our natural ability to "parse" is radically different and can be explained as a rule-based system.
|
|
|
|