Syntactic Structures and Recursive Devices: A Legacy of Imprecision Author(s): Marcus Tomalin Source: Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, Vol. 20, No. 3, MATHEMATICS OF LANGUAGE (Summer 2011), pp. 297-315 Published by: Springer Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41488480 Accessed: 23-04-2020 06:16 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Logic, Language, and Information This content downloaded from 194.94.133.193 on Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:16:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms J Log Lang Inf (201 1) 20:297-315 DOI 10.1007/S10849-01 1-9141-1 Syntactic Structures and Recursive Devices: A Legacy of Imprecision Marcus Tomalin Published online: 17 April 201 1 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 201 1 Abstract Taking Chomsky's Syntactic Structures as a starting point, this paper explores the use of recursive techniques in contemporary linguistic theory. Specif- ically, it is shown that there were profound ambiguities surrounding the notion of recursion in the 1950s, and that this was partly due to the fact that influential texts such as Syntactic Structures neglected to define what exactly constituted a recursive device. As a result, uncertainties concerning the role of recursion in linguistic theory have pre- vailed until the present day, and some of the most common misunderstandings that have appeared in recent discussions are examined at some length. This article shows that debates about such topics are frequently undermined by fundamental misunder- standings concerning core terminology, and the full extent of the prevailing haziness is revealed. An attempt is made, for instance, to distinguish between such things as iter- ative constructional devices and self-similar syntactic embedding, despite the fact that these are usually both unhelpfully classified as examples of recursion. Consequently, this article effectively constitutes a plea for much greater accuracy and clarity when such important issues are addressed from a linguistic perspective. Keywords Syntax • Recursion • Minimalism 1 Introduction Although recursive devices have been used in linguistic theorising implicitly since the fourth century ВС (at least), and explicitly since the 1950s, during the past few years This article is an extensively revised version of a paper that was delivered at MoLlO in 2007. The original paper was delivered as a 'key-note' address which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publication of Syntactic Structures (1957). M. Tomalin (E3) Downing College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1DQ, UK e-mail: [email protected] â Springer This content downloaded from 194.94.133.193 on Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:16:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 298 M. Tomalin such techniques have been subjected to unprecedented discussion and debate. This is partly due to the strong claims that Chomsky (in particular) has made since 1995 concerning the role of recursion in the Minimalist Program. In essence, a strongly minimalist view of language can be expressed by the simple equation: 'interfaces + recursion = language', and this suggests that recursion is the single most important component of the faculty of language (FL).1 While some linguists have enthusias- tically championed this view, others have claimed that it is far too parsimonious. For Sigrid Beck, '[g]rammer is not limited to recursive structure building' (Beck 2007,278). More provocatively still, others have recently challenged the minimalist assumption that recursion is a necessary component of FL by presenting analyses of languages which appear not to utilise recursive structures. Dan Everett, in particu- lar, has claimed that the Amazonian language Pirahã does not make use of nested clauses.2 If such analyses prove to be correct, then recursion would seem not to be universal, and this would in turn undermine its privileged status in modern syntactic theory. Given the numerous arguments made for and against the claim that recursion is fundamental to FL, it is appropriate that the subject should have become prominent in recent discussions of the evolution of natural language. For example, Simon Kirby has explored computational models for the acquisition of 'recursive syntax' (Kirby 2002). In addition, other linguists have recently argued that the traditional view that recursion enables an infinite number of linguistic structures to be generated from a finite set of discrete units is a lazy stance that requires drastic reconsideration. In particular, Geoff Pullum and Barabara Scholtz have proposed that 'the use of a rule-application analog of recursion in grammars does not entail infinitude for human languages, and infini- tude does not offer independent evidence that a human language must have a recursive generative grammar' (Pullum and Scholtz 2010,8) Predictably, such considerations have attracted the attention of non-linguists, and the alleged centrality of recursion in human cognition (in general) has become an increasingly popular research topic in cognitive science more broadly. Michael Corballis, for example, has argued that recur- sion is a distinctive (possibly unique) aspect of human cognitive function (Corballis 2007). In the light of these ongoing debates, this article will seek to accomplish several tasks, but the main purpose is to attempt to clarify the way in which the term recursion is used in contemporary linguistic theorising. In order to do this, an historiographical perspective will be adopted initially, and the deployment of recursive techniques in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (SS) will provide a convenient starting point. As will be shown in detail, the notion of 'recursion' was fundamentally ambiguous when it began to be used by linguists in the 1950s, and (as the subtitle of this article implies), these ambiguities have persisted to the present day. This unfortunate (and needless) perpetuation of imprecision has had a deleterious impact upon recent discussions of the role of recursion in linguistic theory. 1 For a discussion of this formulation, see Sauerland and Gätner (2007). When used in this context, 'interfaces' usually denotes the conceptual-intentional (CI) and sensorimotor (SM) systems. These are the language-external systems with which FL interacts. For other perspectives, see van der Hülst (2010). 2 The ongoing debate about these matters can be traced in publications such as Everett (2005, 2009), Nevins et al. (2009a, b). Springer This content downloaded from 194.94.133.193 on Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:16:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Syntactic Structures and Recursive Devices: A Legacy of Imprecision 299 2 Recursive Syntactic Structures Before focusing on the particular recursive techniques mentioned in SS (and some of Chomsky's other works from the 1950s), it is helpful to reflect upon how the word recursion is commonly used in general, non-technical discourse. The OED, for instance, offers the following definition: The application or use of a recursive procedure or definition; primitive recursion, definition of a function of natural numbers by induction on a single argument or (equivalently) by simple recursion formulae; recursion formula, an equation relating the value of a function for a given value of its argument (or arguments) to its values for other values of the argument(s). This definition is hardly lucid, but it certainly attempts to identify certain kinds of 'pro- cedure' and 'definition' that have distinctive properties of self-reference. By contrast, that other source of all Truth, Wikipedia, begins its entry with these words: Recursion, in mathematics and computer science, is a method of defining func- tions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. The term is also used more generally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recur- sion.3 One again, the main emphasis here is upon particular types of 'process' and 'defini- tion', and recursive qualities are not associated explicitly with inherent structural configurations. As these informal and rather fragmentary definitions/descriptions indicate, words and phrases such as 'procedure', 'process', 'function', 'definition', 'self-reference', 'circularity', and 'efficiency' appear frequently when recursion is discussed. A more playful definition runs as follows: Recursion : If you still don't know, See: "Recursion". At the time of writing (7/1 1/09), the Google search engine essentially implements this formulation: a search for the word 'recursion' returns around three million results, along with the helpful suggestion 'Did you mean: recursion!' . So, informally, there appear to be several inherent properties that are associated with recursive techniques, and self-reference (of some kind) is usually viewed as being central. However, as I have shown in some detail elsewhere, when the word recursion began to be used explicitly in the context of linguistic theory in the 1950s, there were considerable ambiguities as to what the term actually meant.4 Although there is no need to rehearse the same arguments here in detail, a brief overview of the main developments might be useful. In 1 889, the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano made extensive use of inductive definitions in his axioms for the natural numbers, and, influenced in part by Peano's 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursion, accessed on 7/1 1/09. 4 For a detailed discussion, see Tomalin (2007). Springer This content downloaded from 194.94.133.193 on Thu, 23 Apr 2020 06:16:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 300 M.