Abstract
Recursion is a cognitive capacity, potentially unique to humans, which allows
the generation of hierarchies with multiple levels of embedding. This capacity is
thought to primarily underlie syntactic structures in language (Berwick &
Chomsky, 2016), but is also available in other domains such as vision (Martins,
2012). An open question is whether a purportedly primary linguistic capacity is
used in other domains, or whether visual recursion can develop in the absence of
language. If the latter, is recursion a domain-general or multi-domain-specific?
Here we further test the hypothesis that linguistic and visual recursion are independent, in the framework of a case study. Its subject is Álex (AX), a 12-yearold autistic child (ADI-r and ADOS assessed) with an oral open-ended but almost exclusively nominal lexicon in three languages, which he has learned
mainly by reading, with nouns as captions of bi-dimensional images.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 13th International Conference Evolution of Language |
Place of publication | Brussels |
Publication date | 2020 |
Pages | 371-373 |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Event | 13th Evolution of Language Conference - Brussels, Belgium Duration: 14 Apr 2020 → 17 Apr 2020 https://brussels.evolang.org/ |
Conference
Conference | 13th Evolution of Language Conference |
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Country/Territory | Belgium |
City | Brussels |
Period | 14/04/2020 → 17/04/2020 |
Internet address |