We're talking about semiotics in my film class and in one of the essay we're reading, it says that there are a finite amout of words, although the ways in which words can be combined is infinite. Does that just not make sense to anyone else? It seems to me that the number of ways words can be combined is finite. How can you have anything infinite that has a finite number of parts to choose from?
Posts: 6432 | Location: Grayson, Georgia, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
It's sort of like the theorum that says that the sequence of natural numbers is infinite. That is because whatever number you count to, you can always add one to it.
So an English dictionary may have half a million words. Half a million is a finite number. But you can always coin a new one.
Posts: 6249 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
Words are not limited to X number of letters, which seems to imply that there is not an upper limit on how many words are possible. While our culture adds words to our vocabulary every year, science creates even more when new compounds are named.
Posts: 16773 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Oh. I think I see. So like with the words, if we keep combining letters to create new words and keep doing so infinitly, eventually words would start becoming longer and longer.
Posts: 6432 | Location: Grayson, Georgia, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
It's not only that words can get longer, even if the number of words allowed remain at the present finite level, the number and complexity of sentences is unlimited, novels can get longer and longer. Libraries can expand, the internet and blogs can proliferate. Is that infinite? Mathematically infinity is only a concept, implied when something's growth has no defined limit. IMO.
Originally posted by frankvan: It's not only that words can get longer, even if the number of words allowed remain at the present finite level, the number and complexity of sentences is unlimited
English is particularly good at creating new meanings from simple words, if only by adding a preposition. Consider e.g 'go'. We or something may 'go' about/ahead/along/around/at/away/back/by/down/for/forth/in/ into/off/on/out/over/to/together/under/with/without and that list includes combinations with figurative as well as literal meanings.
Post edited to correct page distortion.
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