Language and Linguistics
Non-deterministic approaches in language studies are largely inspired by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. In usage-based linguistic theories, for example, where it is argued that competence, or langue, is based on performance, or parole. To the extent that linguistic knowledge is constituted by experience with language, grammar is argued to be probabilistic and variable rather than fixed and absolute. This now largely discredited conception of grammar as probabilistic and variable is thought to follow from the idea that one's competence changes in accordance with one's experience with language.
Read more about this topic: Stochastic
Famous quotes containing the words language and and/or language:
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)