In programming, languages are often specified by what's called an EBNF grammar, a recursive way of specifying the language's structure. For example, all super simple arithmetic operations using the digits 1-5 can be expressed as
OP = (OP) OP = OP + OP OP = OP - OP OP = OP * OP OP = 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
I was wondering if anyone has attempted a similar description of English or a subset thereof (anything one could wrangle into a computer). For example, I'm sure regular verb conjugation can be thrown into this format, but what about more complex examples? Is there a mathematical proof that one cannot capture the full complexity of English in a finite EBNF grammar?
I am certain this is a complicated question in linguistics, possibly even the holy grail, but I would appreciate any pointers on where to look further!
