Learning theory and natural language

Formal Learning Theory may be conceived as a means of relating theories of comparative grammar to studies of linguistic development. After a brief review of relevant concepts, the present paper surveys formal results within Learning Theory that suggest correponding constraints on linguistic theory. Particular attention is devoted to the question: How many possible natural languages are there?     

I. Formal theory in social science

Contemporary social science tends to suffer from too many misplaced attempts at mathematical or game‐theoretical formulation, and much effort is wasted in either propounding such formulations, or in showing their inanity. Jon Elster does not entirely escape this himself, but Logic and Society is truly remarkable in pointing the way to some possibly very relevant formalizations. These are particularly to be found in the chapter on ‘contradictions of society’. There Elster attempts to delineate the properties of certain self‐frustrating predicaments of action, and to relate them as well to Hegelian‐Marxist conceptions of contradiction. It may be, however, that the relevance of this analysis is restricted to societies whose form of life has become atomistic, and whose members thus function in an individual‐calculative way in many spheres of life. But even so, formalizations of the kind Elster provides would be useful in defining one kind of historically evolved society among others.