by Quinn Tyler Jackson

Abstract— The notion that a linguistic system that is powerful enough to accept any acceptable language but insufficiently complex to meet specific goals or needs is explored. I nominate Chomsky’s generative grammar formalism as the least complex formalism required to describe all language, but show how without the addition of further complexity, little can be said about the formalism itself. I then demonstrate how the O(n) parsing of pseudoknots, a previously difficult to solve problem, becomes tractable by the more complex §-Calculus, and finally close with a falsifiable hypothesis with implications in epistemological complexity.

The full paper is available below:
On Einstein's Razor: Telesis-Driven Introduction of Complexity into Apparently Sufficiently Non-Complex Linguistic Systems

Back to PCID Volume 4.2, November 2005