Recursion as a Human Universal and as a Primitive

  • Boban Arsenijevic Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
  • Wolfram Hinzen Durham University
Keywords: cyclic spell-out, interfaces, narrow syntax, recursion

Abstract

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.

Author Biography

Boban Arsenijevic, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
PostDoc researcher at the Department of Theoretical Linguistics
Published
2010-09-28
Issue
Vol. 4 No. 2-3 (2010)
Section
Articles
Authors who submit to and publish with BIOLINGUISTICS agree to the following terms:
  • The author(s) retain(s) copyright and grant(s) the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in BIOLINGUISTICS.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., archiving a format-free manuscript in institutional repositories, on their personal website, or a preprint server such as LingBuzz, PsyArXiv, or similar) prior to and during the submission process, because we believe that this behaviour can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access).