erratio comments on Tidbit: “Semantic over-achievers” - Less Wrong

6 Post author: kpreid 01 December 2011 03:49PM

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Comment author: erratio 03 December 2011 06:08:54PM *  0 points [-]

would you agree that they don't have rules which specifically ban or suppress or mention recursion in order not to use it?

Yes, absolutely. I don't even need to go past English to find structures that we don't use for no apparent reason (ie. the structure will get marked as 'odd' but not flat-out wrong by native speakers, and the meaning will be completely intelligible), so it's plausible to me that a culture might just not like recursion in their language for no apparent reason.