Confronting Friends and Family

[Hovik]

As Tiberius put it, you cannot produce an infinite number from a finite set. I'll leave it to him to do the math defeating, but even a layman can see that is just ludicrous.

It's not semantics. It's just a silly thing that lots of people like to do. Again, I studied a number of things in school. I don't call myself any of them. Are you a banker if you count money at a bank? This is just a continuation of another conversation I had for me. I am baffled as to why people do this.

You're missing the component of grammar. When I say "infinite" I mean "theoretically infinite" in the sense that not all permutations will ever be represented, but there exists the possibility for infinite novel utterances. This is captured in the idea of recursion, the fact that I can say "I know that John thinks that Mary believes that ..." or "I saw the man by the table with the lamp from Walmart in Idaho in the United States ..." and so forth. This is not a trivial point; only language can have this sort recursion in its structure that allows for an infinite number of novel utterances.

Edit: I want to add as well that it's possible that another communication system can have recursion and still not meet the criteria of language. There are things like displacement (the ability to discuss topics removed spatially and temporally from the speaker) and other criteria that are involved as well.

Tell me, then, what does define a banker? At what point does "a guy working in a bank, counting money and performing the duties of a banker" become "a banker"? At what point does "a guy who scientifically studies language in a university and is trained in the subject of linguistics" become "a linguist"?