On 5 Feb 2015 21:14, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> First I'd have to know what English is, in order to compare,So although you're not sure what it is, you have an idea of what it is that is good enough for you to know what it isn't?
> but it seems unlikely that English is the same as a full explication of its rules.
How about if English is the same as a full explication of a family of sets of rules, one set per idiolect? Or you feel that even an idiolect is not the same as a full explication of its rules? Is the game of chess different from a full explication of its rules? If Yes, is that because there are many different possible explications, or because chess, like tigers, is very different from a set of rules?
> But more importantly, if someone else presented me with their own full explication of the rules of English, using different terminology and different analytic tools, I don't think it would be necessarily the case that one explication had to be better than the other, they could just be two different explications.
Would it necessarily be the case that neither is better than the other?
Are preferential criteria such as simplicity and knownness (by the speaker's mind) valid?
> The "syntax" is pretty good with predicate-argument relations, but poor with binding relations. One important type of binding relation is achieved by repetition of phonological form, but the "syntax" is completely blind to phonological form (in the sense that it can't tell "da" and "de" apart). But it can tell that a given KOhA is an argument of a given BRIVLA for example.
That's where you'd start with the work of converting "syntax" into syntax.