Version 1
: Received: 21 February 2024 / Approved: 21 February 2024 / Online: 23 February 2024 (06:25:00 CET)
How to cite:
de les Coves, G.; Corominas Murtra, B.; Sole, R. Universality and Complexity in Natural Languages: Mechanistic and Emergent. Preprints2024, 2024021330. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1330.v1
de les Coves, G.; Corominas Murtra, B.; Sole, R. Universality and Complexity in Natural Languages: Mechanistic and Emergent. Preprints 2024, 2024021330. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1330.v1
de les Coves, G.; Corominas Murtra, B.; Sole, R. Universality and Complexity in Natural Languages: Mechanistic and Emergent. Preprints2024, 2024021330. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1330.v1
APA Style
de les Coves, G., Corominas Murtra, B., & Sole, R. (2024). Universality and Complexity in Natural Languages: Mechanistic and Emergent. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1330.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
de les Coves, G., Bernat Corominas Murtra and Ricard Sole. 2024 "Universality and Complexity in Natural Languages: Mechanistic and Emergent" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.1330.v1
Abstract
Human language is a prime example of a complex system characterized by multiple scales of description. Understanding its origins and distinctiveness has sparked investigations with very different approaches, ranging from the Universal Grammar to statistical analyses of word usage, all of which highlight, from different angles, the potential existence of universal patterns shared by all languages. Yet, a cohesive perspective remains elusive. In this paper we address this challenge. First, we provide a basic structure of universality, and define recursion as a special case thereof. We cast generative grammars of formal languages, the Universal Grammar and the Greenberg Universals in our basic structure of universality, and compare their mathematical properties. We then define universality for writing systems and show that only those using the rebus principle are universal. Finally, we examine Zipf's law for the statistics of word usage, explain its role as a complexity attractor, and explore its relation to universal writing systems as well as its similarities with universal Turing machines. Overall, we find that there are two main kinds of universality, termed{\it mechanistic} and {\it emergent}, and unveil some connections between them.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
