On the Unlimited Imperfections of Language: "Language. Unlimited? Possibly. Perfect? Not Likely."

Language. Unlimited? Possibly.  Perfect? Not Likely.

Imagine trying to draw a perfectly smooth circle out of straight lines, or little tiny squares.  This is in fact what a computer does.  Unsophisticated computers produce circles that have jagged edges, like a saw blade.  Very fancy computers seem to produce flawless curves and thus perfect circles.  But, zoom in close enough on the edge of that “perfect” circle, and you will find the same saw tooth edging that was readily visible on the unsophisticated computer. 


We can build incredibly complex, and exceptionally sophisticated computers, with the best of the best mathematical algorithms for producing circles, but, when the disks have stopped spinning, zoom in again on this “Uber Circle” and you will still find that same saw toothed edging.  Why?  The computer/display does not have “curve”, “arc”, “bend”, “circle”, etc. as a foundational building “block” within its language.  It only has “little squares” within its core vocabulary.  To represent anything other than squares, elaborate instructions must be given to the computer, explaining to it how to assemble these little tiny squares such that the result is something that does not look like a square.  The simpler the computer, the less complex the instructions it can understand, and the more crude the output (let’s assume “circle) will be. Very sophisticated computers can be given very, very complicated instructions on how to assemble the little squares such that the result looks like a circle.  But either way, the Circle is still just a bunch of little squares representing themselves to be a circle, with some computers better able than others to tell the story.

Human language is structurally the same, the key difference being that our vocabulary is not restricted to little squares, but our vocabulary is also not perfectly complete.  The fewer the vocabulary blocks we possess, the cruder the story we might tell in relation to the actual event.  The more sophisticated we are, and the larger the number of vocabulary blocks we possess, the more refined our story appears.  But no matter how smooth the arc of our story, zoom in close enough and you will see the same saw tooth edges that we saw with our circle.  Why? We can forever converge on linguistic perfection, but the difference between current state linguistics and perfection is infinitely divisible, and thus perfection is never achievable.  Just as a square can never be a circle.

And therefore, while unlimited amounts of other linguistic accessories can be layered on top of our vocabulary building blocks to try and smooth the imperfect edges(tone, cadence, volume, etc.), we can maintain that our language is unlimited, but our communications can never be perfect.