Children's Acquisition of Tail-recursion Sequences: A Review of Locative Recursion and Possessive Recursion as Examples

TL;DR

This review examines how children acquire tail-recursion sequences, focusing on locative and possessive recursion, to understand language development and cognitive mechanisms, highlighting experimental findings and ongoing debates.

Contribution

It systematically summarizes research on children's acquisition of tail recursion, analyzing experimental methods, acquisition paths, and influencing factors for the first time.

Findings

Children may acquire recursion gradually or synchronously.

Performance differences exist between locative and possessive recursion.

Language acquisition device likely facilitates quick recursion learning.

Abstract

Recursion is the nature of human natural language. Since Chomsky proposed generative grammar, many scholars have studied recursion either theoretically or empirically. However, by observing children's acquisition of tail recursion sequences, we can verify the nativism of language supported by universal grammar and reveal the cognitive mechanism of human brain. To date, our understanding of children's acquisition path of recursion and influencing factors still remain controversial. This systematic review summarizes the research of tail recursive sequence by taking possessive recursion and locative recursion as examples, focusing on the experimental methods, acquisition paths, and influencing factors of tail recursive sequence. The current behavioural experiments reveal that, the debate about children's performance revolves around: 1) Gradual acquisition or synchronous acquisition. 2) symmetry or asymmetry between the acquisition of locative recursion sequences and possessive recursion sequences. We presume that children can acquire recursion quickly in a short period of time thanks to the language acquisition device, though there are also scholars who believe that a third factor also plays a role.