LINGUIST List 12.1410

Tue May 22 2001

Disc: How Do You Demonstrate Recursion?

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

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1. Geoffrey Sampson, Re: 12.1345, Disc: New: How do you demonstrate recursion?

Message 1: Re: 12.1345, Disc: New: How do you demonstrate recursion?

To me it seems clear that the kind of linguistic structure described would
not, if that was all the structure a language had, be regarded as 
demonstrating recursion in grammar. Sticking similar things together one
after another in long sequences is what people call parataxis, _as opposed
to_ hypotaxis. For clear recursion, you need cases where an element of
type X is a small part of an enclosing element also of type X.


G.R. Sampson, Professor of Natural Language Computing

School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, GB

e-mail geoffscogs.susx.ac.uk
web http://www.grsampson.net