Recursion In Language Syntax And Arithmetics: Interdependenceor Independence Between Domains? An Experimental Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2014.1.16703Keywords:
Recursion, Language, Numerical Cognition, Syntactic Priming.Abstract
The ability to compute hierarchical recursive structures, such as those found in natural grammars, has been identified as a key feature for distinguishing humans from other primates (HAUSER; CHOMSKY; FITCH, 2002). This kind of structure, however, does not seem to be exclusive to the domain of natural language. In strictly structural terms, a parallel can be drawn between linguistic sentences and numerical expressions. Specifically, in both cases there may be structures with center-embedding. This paper aims to address the notion of linguistic recursion, within the framework of Generative Theory, and to report experimental results. A self-paced reading experiment was designed to explore a priming effect in the processing of recursive structures associated with different cognitive domains, namely, language and numerical cognition. The data do not support the idea that the processing of similar structures is affected by cross-domain syntactic priming. The results are discussed in the light of a concept of an interface between an on-line model of linguistic computation and of current evidence from the field of neuroscience.Downloads
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