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Recursion in pragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Stephen C. Levinson
Stephen C. Levinson*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University, Nijmegen
*
Stephen.Levinson@mpi.nl
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

recursioncenter-embeddingdialoguesyntaxpragmatics

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Type
Short Report
Information
Language , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 149 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Linguistic Society of America

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