[FOM] expressive power of natural languages

[W.Taylor at math.canterbury.ac.nz]

Quoting "americanmcgeesfr at gmx.net" <americanmcgeesfr at gmx.net>:

> I was wondering if there is any (at least semi-)conclusive view about
> the expressive power of a natural language like english resulting in a
> statement like "whatever it is, it is a language of at least 2nd order".

Surely you're going to have to put *some* restriction on natural language
for this to make sense?  English (with a truth predicate, which natural
English most certainly does) is known to be inconsistent, (Russell set),
so is in some sense of every possible order.

-- wfct


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