-
Recursion in Pragmatics
- Language
- Linguistic Society of America
- Volume 89, Number 1, March 2013
- pp. 149-162
- 10.1353/lan.2013.0005
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
There has been a recent spate of work on recursion as a central design feature of language. This short report points out that there is little evidence that unlimited recursion, understood as center-embedding, is typical of natural language syntax. Nevertheless, embedded pragmatic construals seem available in every language. Further, much deeper center-embedding can be found in dialogue or conversation structure than can be found in syntax. Existing accounts for the 'performance' limitations on center-embedding are thus thrown into doubt. Dialogue materials suggest that center-embedding is perhaps a core part of the human interaction system, and is for some reason much more highly restricted in syntax than in other aspects of cognition.