Fwd: [FUNKNET] PirahN

Daniel L. Everett dlevere at ilstu.edu
Wed Apr 25 18:24:54 UTC 2007


I was asked to post this on behalf of Fred Karlsson

Dan

Begin forwarded message:

> From: fgk at mappi.helsinki.fi
> Date: April 25, 2007 12:42:12 PM CDT
> To: Mike_Cahill at sil.org
> Cc: "Daniel L. Everett" <dlevere at ilstu.edu>, Arie Verhagen  
> <Arie.Verhagen at let.LeidenUniv.nl>, funknet at mailman.rice.edu,  
> funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu, "A. Katz" <amnfn at well.com>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] PirahN
>
> It is common knowledge in computer science (and should be
> it in linguistics) that **tail-recursion**, i.e. recursion
> leftwards as in English stacked genitives (Sue's mother's ...),
> or rightwards as in stacked final embeddings (.. said
> that ... thought that ... claimed that ...), is formally
> equivalent to iteration. See Aho et el. (1986: 53) for details.
>
> Center-embedding is another matter: this is full-blown recursion,
> requiring a stack for everything to be properly wound up.
>
> Fred Karlsson
>
>
> Aho, A. V., Sethi, R. & Ullman, J. D. (1986). Compilers. Reading,  
> Mass.:
> Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
>
>
> Citerar Mike_Cahill at sil.org:
>
>> Well, good luck on getting everyone on the same page! I must  
>> confess I
>> had
>> no idea anyone would talk of iterations as "recursion." If you do
>> nothing
>> more at the conference than agreeing on a common definition, that  
>> will
>> still be a significant accomplishment.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>



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