“唯递归假说”及其证据——一项基于儿童内递归能力发展规律的实验研究

The recursion-only hypothesis and its evidence—An empirical study based on children's center-embedded ability development

2002年,Hauser、Chomsky和Fitch提出“唯递归假说”,认为“递归”这一计算机制为人类自然语言所特有,是人脑的先天属性。十多年来研究者尝试从不同角度证实或证伪该假说。然而他们都未对“递归”给出确切的定义,导致结论之间缺乏可比性和连贯性,语言与递归的关系至今仍不明确。儿童语言递归能力获得研究对这一问题的探索和解决至关重要,因此,本文在明确“递归”定义的前提下,通过“看图-诱导产出”实验和“看图-听题-选图”实验研究3~10岁儿童“内递归”结构理解和产出能力的发展规律,并尝试从这一角度推测“唯递归假说”的合理性。

The Recursion-Only Hypothesis(ROH)proposed by Hauser,Chomsky and Fitch in 2002 holds that the computational mechanism of recursion is unique to human languages.It is frequently approved or contested in different fields of research in the past ten years.Nevertheless,the researchers concerned never defined'recursion'exactly,which consequently hinders consistent interpretation of the empirical findings.As such,the exact relation between recursion and human language is still unclear.It is believed that studying children's acquisition of recursion in language can help shed light on this problem.Therefore,this paper first presents a clear definition of'recursion'and then reports an elicited production study and a comprehension study of 3-to-10-yearold children's ability to produce and understand center-embedded structures.Presentations of the findings follow,which support the ROH.Implications of the findings are discussed.