[FOM] expressive power of natural languages

W.Taylor at math.canterbury.ac.nz W.Taylor at math.canterbury.ac.nz
Thu Dec 1 00:32:55 EST 2011


Quoting "americanmcgeesfr at gmx.net" <americanmcgeesfr at gmx.net>:

> I was wondering if there is any (at least semi-)conclusive view about
> the expressive power of a natural language like english resulting in a
> statement like "whatever it is, it is a language of at least 2nd order".

Surely you're going to have to put *some* restriction on natural language
for this to make sense?  English (with a truth predicate, which natural
English most certainly does) is known to be inconsistent, (Russell set),
so is in some sense of every possible order.

-- wfct


----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.



More information about the FOM mailing list