Conjecture: grammar constitutes a functional self‑description of natural language

Investigate whether natural‑language grammar functions as a self‑description that encodes linguistic elements, rules, and their interpretation, analogously to self‑modelling within tangled information hierarchies.

Background

Extending the paper’s framework beyond biology, the authors suggest social systems may also exhibit self‑modelling tangled hierarchies, with institutions and grammars encoding collective regularities.

They conjecture that grammar encodes functional self‑descriptions for language, potentially reflecting similar information‑hierarchy dynamics observed in biological systems.

References

In particular, one may conjecture that grammar provides a functional self-description of natural language, codifying various linguistic elements and rules, as well as their interpretation.

— Biological arrow of time: Emergence of tangled information hierarchies and self-modelling dynamics (2409.12029 - Prokopenko et al., 18 Sep 2024) in Section 9.4, Social dynamics and undecidability