Open AccessRecursion as a Human Universal and as a Primitive
Author(s) -
Boban Arsenijević,
Wolfram Hinzen
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
biolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1450-3417
DOI - 10.5964/bioling.8781
Subject(s) - recursion (computer science) , generative grammar , universal grammar , grammar , computer science , problem of universals , linguistics , perspective (graphical) , formal grammar , linguistic universal , cognitive science , range (aeronautics) , artificial intelligence , psychology , programming language , philosophy , materials science , composite material
This contribution asks, in an empirical rather than formal perspective, whether a range of descriptive phenomena in grammar usually characterized in terms of ‘recursion’ actually exhibit recursion. It is concluded that empirical evidence does not support this customary assumption. Language, while formally recursive, need not be recursive in the underlying generative mechanisms of its grammar. Hence, while recursion may well be one of the hallmarks of human nature, grammar may not be the cognitive domain where it is found. Arguments for this claim are briefly exposed and then discussed with respect to a selection of talks from the DGfS workshop on Foundations of Language Comparison: Human Universals as Constraints on Language Diversity that led to this special issue.