Articlediamond2010

Recursion as a Human Universal and as a Primitive

49 citations0/0 files storedBiolinguistics

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Categorization, perception, and language Language and cultural evolution

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.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 49 citations exist upstream.

References

2014The Minimalist Program 1995Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure 1997The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery 2001Derivation by Phase 2002The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?1956Three models for the description of language 1999Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective 2000Conceptual spaces: the geometry of thought

Cited by

2010Syntax: Its Evolution and Its Representation in the Brain 2011Biolinguistic Perspectives on Recursion: Introduction to the Special Issue

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.