Concept
Formal grammar
Overview
structure of a formal language
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But the number of words being almost infinite, the memory found itself quite loaded and oppressed by the multitude of characters which it was obliged to retain. Necessity taught them, therefore, to divide words into their elements, and to invent characters which should represent, not the words themselves, but the elements of which they were composed. In consequence of this invention, every particular word came to be…
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Close in meaning to Formal grammar; the term itself is not named.
Sec. 52. The continuous use of these modes of expression that are alike forcible in themselves and forcible from their associations, produces the peculiarly impressive species of composition which we call poetry. Poetry, we shall find, habitually adopts those symbols of thought, and those methods of using them, which instinct and analysis agree in choosing as most effective, and becomes poetry by virtue of doing…
Herbert Spencer, The Philosophy of Style
States what Formal grammar is.
He further applied to his prose writing the rule of French versification which forbids a _hiatus_(the concourse of two vowels), not allowing it to himself even at the break between two sentences or two paragraphs; nor did he permit himself ever to use the same word twice, either in the same sentence or in two consecutive sentences, though belonging to different paragraphs: with the exception of the monosyllabic…
John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism
Close in meaning to Formal grammar; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Formal grammar
Related ideas
- Automata theory
- Formal language
- Tuple
- Mathematical logic
- Noam Chomsky
- Linguistics
- Applied mathematics
- Set (mathematics)
- Semantics
- Turing machine
- Theoretical computer science
- Generative grammar
- Union (set theory)
- Compiler
- Context-free grammar
- Disjoint sets
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of First-order logic.