17.847, Sum: Recursion in Children's Rhymes

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-847. Mon Mar 20 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.847, Sum: Recursion in Children's Rhymes

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1)
Date: 18-Mar-2006
From: Jill de Villiers < jdevil at smith.edu >
Subject: Recursion in Children's Rhymes 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:16:28
From: Jill de Villiers < jdevil at smith.edu >
Subject: Recursion in Children's Rhymes 
 

Regarding query: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-470.html#1

Dear Linguist List,

I recently posted a query asking linguists to consult their memories of
childhood, especially in other languages, to help us in compiling a
database of children's rhymes (nursery rhymes, skipping rhymes, songs,
those in verbatim folk takes etc.) that display recursion (NP, PP, S - even
event recursion interests us.)

We received about a dozen responses, and in the course of them we did add a
few to our database. Many people mentioned the classic poem that is part of
the Passover meal, the Chad Gadya, originally in Aramaic. We learned about
a rhyme from Chile that is in roughly the same form as "the house that Jack
built", and a popular Italian song. We are still missing rhymes from many
areas of the world's languages, especially lacking African, indigenous
American languages, Slavic and East Asia, so please keep writing to us!

At present we have the following possible recursion examples, but virtually
all from Indo-European languages.

Please continue to email us as jdevil at smith.edu, ccaulfie at smith.edu

Thanks!
Jill de Villiers

File Name	Language
ALLA FIERA DELL'EST	Italian
CI VUOLE UN FIORE	Italian
Da kamen alle Hunde	German
Estaba la rana sentada	Spanish
In A Dark Dark Forest	English
Korean Song (still untranslated)	Korean
L'ARBRE EST DANS SES FEUILLES 	French
La Casa Que Pedro Fez	Portuguese
''La Chiva'' (The little she-goat)	Spanish
London Bridge	English
One Dark and Stormy Night	English
Rattling Bog	English
Summerisle	English
The Death and Burial of Poor Hen-Sparrow 	Urdu? (only translation available)
The Domicile Erected By John	English
The Grain of Corn	Punjabi (only translation available)
The House That Jack Built	English
The Key of the King's Garden	English
The Man Who Jumped	English
The Old Woman and Her Pig	English
The Song That Never Ends	English
The Story of the Little Old Woman and the Lamb	Welsh (only translation
available)
The Twelve Days of Christmas	English
The Want of a Nail	English
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly	English
There's A Hole In My Bucket	English
There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea 	English
This Is The Key of the Universe	English
Un Hoyo en el fondo de la mar	Spanish
Une Perdriole	French
Who Knows One?	Hebrew
Chad Gadya - One Little Goat	Aramaic/Chaldaic 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Syntax





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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-847