The apparent fact that the number of utterances in a nThe apparent fact that the number of utterances in a natural language is unbounded is one of its more widely remarked upon properties and a core tenet of modern linguistic theory. The classic argument for creativity uses the idea that one can continually add further adjuncts to sentences to establish that there can be no longest sentence and therefore no finite number of sentences (see Chomsky, 1957). . . .
"This conventional argument for the creativity of natural language is overly strained: who has actually heard a 500-word sentence? In contrast, anyone who studies [natural language] generation has available a far more reasonable and commonsense account of creativity, namely that one continually uses new utterances because one is continually faced with new situations. is unbounded is one of its more widely remarked upon properties and a core tenet of modern linguistic theory. The classic argument for creativity uses the idea that one can continually add further adjuncts to sentences to establish that there can be no longest sentence and therefore no finite number of sentences