In a recent article, Hauser, Chomsky and Techumseh Fitch (2002) hypothesize
that syntactical recursion is a defining feature of Homo sapiens. In simple terms,
linguistic recursion is the ability to construct a phrase within a phrase indefinitely (only
limited by the constraints of memory) to create an almost limitless number of ideas.
I have long believed that what Hauser et al call syntactical recursion, which one might also call hierarchical statistics or hierarchical predictions, is a fundamental feature of intelligence, so I thought that the brief to-the-point summary above was worth reproducing.
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