Resolving the Infinitude Controversy
A simple inductive argument shows natural languages to have infinitly many sentences, but workers in the field have uncovered clear evidence of a diverse group of exceptional languages from Proto-Uralic to Dyirbal and most recently, Pirah, that appear to lack recursive devices entirely. We argue that in an information-theoretic setting non-recursive natural languages appear neither exceptional nor functionally inferior to the recursive majority.
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