The emergence of linguistic complexity

Brian MacWhinney | Carnegie Mellon University

Linguists have often argued that recursion produces linguistic complexity. However, recursion itself preexisting processes such as lexical insertion, lexical combination, memory stacks, and methods of interpretation. In the brain, recursion is an emergent property of a set of adaptations that involve at least six processing systems. Linguistic complexity arises from the interplay of all six of these systems. The complexity of this neuronal support means that the full complexity of human language could not have arisen fortuitously at some single moment in evolution. However, there is evidence that some pieces of the six systems supporting complexity have developed more recently than others.

Published online: 22 April 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.85.15the

Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Arbib, Michael A.

2015. In The Handbook of Language Emergence, ► pp. 600 ff.

Bánréti, Zoltán

2010. Recursion in aphasia. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 24:11 ► pp. 906 ff.

MacWhinney, Brian

2015. In The Handbook of Language Emergence, ► pp. 1 ff.

Pleyer, Michael & Stefan Hartmann

2019. Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches. Frontiers in Psychology 10

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