Recursion in Human Languages, FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

[piraha1]

Full Title: Recursion in Human Languages 
Short Title: RecHuL 

Date: 27-Apr-2007 - 29-Apr-2007 
Location: Normal, Illinois, USA 
Contact Person: Daniel Everett (dlevere at ilstu.edu)

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 20-Nov-2006 

Meeting Description:

Recursion on Human Languages will feature presentations that address the typology, 
psychology, formalization, and grammatical manifestations of recursion in human 
languages.

Recursion in Human Languages 

In an important paper, Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) state the following about the 
narrow faculty of language (FLN): ''We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is 
the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN 
may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look 
for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, 
number, navigation, and social relations).'' 

As interesting as this claim might be, it is difficult to evaluate it for various reasons. For 
example, there is first the fact that recursion has a long and yet often unclear history in 
the development of formal linguistics (Tomalin (2006)). How is recursion defined? Second, 
the question arises as to where recursion must manifest itself in FLN. In the morphology? 
In the phonology? In the syntax? In the semantics? In all components of the grammar? 
Third, there is the empirical issue as to whether the claim above is in fact true. Is recursion 
found in all languages? Is it distributed throughout grammars in the same way in all 
languages? 

As a start towards addressing these and other fundamental questions about the nature of 
recursion in human languages, the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute 
for Evolutionary Anthropology and Illinois State University are sponsoring a conference 
from April 27-29, 2007, at the campus of Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. 
Invited speakers for this conference are (topics are listed, rather than actual titles of 
presentations): 

-Prof. Aravind Joshi (University of Pennsylvania) - ' Uniform and non-uniform recursion 
-Prof. Edward Gibson (MIT) - 'The psychology of recursion' 
-Prof. Marianne Mithun (UCSB) - 'The typology of recursion' 
-Prof. D. Robert Ladd (Edinburgh) - What would 'recursion' mean in phonology?' 
-Prof. Daniel L. Everett (ISU) - 'Cultural constraints on recursion' 
-Prof. Alec Marantz (MIT) - 'Recursion in morphology' 
-(tentative) Prof. W. Tecumseh Fitch (St. Andrews) - 'The evolution of recursion' 

In addition to these invited talks, we would like to invite abstracts for up to sixteen 
additional talks on recursion. Abstracts may be up to 500 words in length and may 
address any aspect of recursion, e.g. its history, its formal nature, unusual distributions or 
manifestations of recursion in specific languages, etc. Abstracts must be received by 
November 20, 2006. Authors will be notified on abstract decisions by December 20, 2006. 
A webpage for this conference will be announced soon. 

Please send abstracts and any questions regarding this conference to: 

Daniel L. Everett, Professor of Linguistics & Anthropology and Chair, 
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 
Campus Box 4300 
Illinois State University 
Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 
OFFICE: 309-438-3604 
FAX: 309-438-8038





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