terça-feira, 2 de fevereiro de 2010

New horizons in the study of language

(Noam Chomsky)

This property intrigued Galileo, who regarded the discovery of a means to communicate our "most secret thoughts to any other person with 24 little characters" as the greatest of all human inventions. The invention succeeds because it reflects the discrete infinity of the language that these characters are used to represent. Shortly
after, the authors of the Port Royal Grammar were struck by the "marvellous invention" of a means to construct from a few dozen sounds an infinity of expressions that enable us to reveal to others what we think and imagine and feel - from a contemporary standpoint, not an "invention" but no less "marvellous" as a product of biological evolution, about which virtually nothing is known, in this case.

Nenhum comentário:

Postar um comentário