Bull. Hiroshima Inst. Tech. Research Vol.51（2017）25-32

ArticleChomsky and Everett
Naoki ARAKI ＊（Received Nov. 1, 2016）

Abstract
Noam Chomsky thought of discrete inﬁnity as the core property of human language but later hesomehow changed his own claim. He regards recursion, instead of discrete inﬁnity, as the universal
property of human language. Meanwhile, Daniel Everett has researched one of the Amazonian languages, Pirahã and insisted that recursion is not found in Pirahã. Some researchers claim that Pirahã
has recursion as other languages do but others think that even if recursion is not employed in thelanguage, it does not mean that recursion is not the universal property of human language. Is recursion the universal property of human language as Chomsky insists?
Key Words: discrete inﬁnity, recursion, Pirahã, tool-kit hypothesis, recursive thinking.

This is what the word inﬁnity means here. But that is
not the case with other animals. For example, thenumber of ape calls is ﬁnite and the bee language is
inﬁnite but not discrete. Thus, human language has
the unique property of discreet inﬁnity. Furthermore,
it is noted that Chomsky thinks that discrete inﬁnity
can be observed in human speech alone.
But surprisingly enough, Chomsky abruptly
starts to insist that not discrete inﬁnity but recursion
is the universal property of human language. Is recursion the same as discrete inﬁnity? In a sense, we
can say that recursion is based on being discrete andmakes inﬁnity. So it may be thought that recursion is
the same as discrete inﬁnity. Then, what is recursion?

Introduction
First Chomsky insisted that discrete inﬁnity was
the core property of human language but later hesomehow changed his idea. Then he proposes recursion as the universal property of human language.
But Everett doubts the plausibility of recursion because it is not found in Pirahã. Is recursion the universal property of human language?
1. Discrete Inﬁnity

Chomsky claimed that the language faculty ofhumans has the property of discrete inﬁnity:
The latter [the language faculty] has featuresthat are quite unusual, perhaps unique in the biological world. In technical terms it has the property of“discrete inﬁnity.”(Chomsky 1988: 169)

2. Recursion

Chomsky argues, along with Marc D. Hauser
and W. Tecumseh Fitch, that the faculty of language
should be divided into two parts: the faculty of language in the broad sense (henceforth FLB) and thefaculty of language in the narrow sense (henceforth
FLN). Furthermore, they insist that FLN includes recursion:

Human language is not a continuum but composed of distinct parts. This is what the word discretemeans here. Also human language has no limit, inprinciple, to how many words a sentence contains.
＊＊＊

Department of Information Systems and Management, Faculty of Applied Information Science, Hiroshima Institute of Technology, Hiroshima 731-5193, Japan. E-mail: n.araki.gm@it-hiroshima.ac.jp― 25 ―Naoki ARAKIWe submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense(FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). [...] We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion [...].
(Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch 2002:1569)

3. Pirahã

Everett has studied one of the Amazonian languages, Pirahã and insisted that Pirahã sentences
have no recursion, which Chomsky claims is the universal property of human language. For example, Pirahãs say:This FLN, a core property of which is recursion,
generates an inﬁnite array of expressions, using a ﬁnite set of elements:“Ko Paitá, tapoá xigaboopaáti. Xoogiai hi goo

tapoá xoáboi. Xaisigíai.”[...] a core property of FLN is recursion, [...]
FLN takes a ﬁnite set of elements and yields a potentially inﬁnite array of discrete expressions. This capacity of FLN yields discreet inﬁnity [...].
(Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch 2002: 1571)

If this is literally translated into English, we
have:“Hey Paitá, bring back some nails. Dan bought

those very nails. They are the same.”(Everett 2008: 227)

Here, recursion is treated as being different fromdiscrete inﬁnity. In other words, it is thought that recursion generates discrete inﬁnity. If so, recursion is
located in internalized language (henceforth I-language) and discrete infinity is in externalized language (henceforth E-language). I-language is aphysical mechanism of the brain and E-language isthe actual utterances. In fact, Chomsky (1988:169)
deals with discrete infinity in the domain of E-language, referring to ape calls and the bee language.
So recursion is thought to be located in the domainof I-language.
Moreover, FLN described above, is uniquely
human while much of FLB is shared with other species:

In such a case, English usually expresses thesame meaning as the above, using a relative pronoun,
that:“ Hey Paitá, bring back the nails that Dan

bought.”(Everett 2008: 227)

By the way, according to Everett, although no
deﬁnition of recursion is given in Hauser, Chomsky
and Fitch (2002), recursion is deﬁned as“the ability
to put one item inside another of the same type (Everett 2008: 228).”Based on his definition of recursion, he explains recursion in syntax as follows:[...] although many aspects of FLB are sharedwith other vertebrates, the core recursive aspect of
FLN currently appears to lack any analog in animalcommunication and possibly other domains as well.
(Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch 2002: 1571)
Thus, recursion has come to be a core propertyof all human languages, which communications ofother animals do not have. But it is unknown why
Chomsky abandoned the notion of discrete infinity
and adopts the notion of recursion as the universal
property of human language.

(Everett 2008: 227)

In syntax, again, this [recursion] would translate
into putting one unit inside another unit of the same
type. Take a phrase like John’s brother’s son, whichcontains the noun phrases John, his brother, and hisson. And a sentence like I said that you are ugly contains the sentence you are ugly. (Everett 2008: 228)
Going back to the Pirahã sentences cited above,
there is no recursion with the three sentences juxtaposed in a row, but the English sentence“Bring backthe nails that Dan bought”contains another sentence“that Dan bought.”According to Everett＇s deﬁnitionof recursion, this means that English has recursion.
So“whatever you could say with recursion in one― 26 ―

Chomsky and Everett

language [English], you could say without it in another [Pirahã]”(Everett 2008: 228) says Everett, although“Chomsky claimed that the fundamental toolthat underlies all of this creativity of human language
is recursion (Everett 2008: 228).”If Everett is right,
then recursion will not be the universal property ofhuman language against Chomsky＇s claim.

subordinate (adverbial) clauses usually follow thematrix clause.”
To conclude, we have so far found no clear evidence for languages that demonstrably lack recursionof any kind;(Heine and Kuteva 2007: 273)
As Heine and Kuteva point out, Everett (1986)
recognized recursion in Pirahã but later he (2005)
abandoned his ﬁrst analysis and insisted that Pirahã
did not have any recursion at all.

4. Pirahã has recursion

Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva (2007: 273) insist
that Pirahã has recursion as other languages do, accepting Everett＇s ﬁrst analysis of Pirahã in 1986:

5. Pirahã does not have recursion

On the other hand, here is an argument, independently of Everett＇s analysis of Pirahã, which saysthat Pirahã does not have recursion:[...] Based on his extensive knowledge of thislanguage, Everett ( 1986 , 2005 ; Bower 2005 ) concludes that it [the Amazonian language, Pirahã] does
not make use of recursion. A look at the description
provided by Everett (1986) suggests, however, that
there is an alternative view on this matter. As wenoted above, recursion manifests itself in particular
in noun modiﬁcation and clause subordination or, to
put it more strongly, if either of these is present,
there is recursion. It would seem that both are in fact
present in Pirahã. Thus, (8a) seems to be an instanceof possessor—possessee modification and (8b) of
noun—adjective modification. While Everett notesthat noun modiﬁcation involves paratactic augmentation, the evidence provided suggests that these arecases that in certain schools of linguistics could be
described in terms of a recursive rule such as (1b) [A→ A [B] ].
(8) Pirahã (Mura, Macro-Chibchan; Everett 1986:
209)
a. ti bai xaagá giopaí xahóápátí giopaí.
I fear have dog Xahóápátí dog‘ I am afraid of the dog, Xahóápátí＇s dog.＇b. xogaí xogií koíhi hiaba
ﬁeld big small NEG‘ (a) big ﬁeld, not (a) small (one)＇
And there are also examples to suggest that there issome kind of clause subordination in Pirahã; sufﬁce
it to quote Everett (1986: 26₂-₃):“Certain types ofsubordinate clause (nominalized, temporal and conditional) are marked morphologically on the subordinate verb”, or“Temporal and conditional ... clauses
precede the matrix clause, whereas other types of

In conclusion, the Pirahã structures we havelooked at in this paper have shown no evidence ofbeing syntactically recursive. Instead, Pirahã appears
to make use of juxtaposition and morphologicalcomplexity to express complex concepts. Our conclusion is hence very similar to Everett＇s analysis(2005). We have discussed a number of constructions
in which even syntactically complex languages prefer non-recursive structures to recursive ones. It is
possible that what other languages have as an option
is the default in Pirahã. Further support comes fromthe fact that Pirahã is an exclusively oral language.
Spoken language and predictable content are exactly
the instances in which non-recursive structures are
preferred in other languages such as English. Hence,
there is no apparent functional need for recursion in
Pirahã syntax.
(Sakel and Stapert 2010: 13)
By the way, Everett (2005, 2007, 2009) has argued about recursion in Pirahã with Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007, 2009). They insist that
Pirahã has recursion as other languages do. But thediscussion is highly technical, wide-ranging, andcomplicated, so we put it aside in this paper.
6. Toolkit Hypothesis

Another response to Everett＇s claim that Pirahã
lacks recursion is that“recursion is a tool that＇s madeavailable by the brain, but it doesn＇t have to be used(Everett 2008: 230).”This is called“the Toolkit Hy― 27 ―

Naoki ARAKI

pothesis.”Jackendoff explains it as follows:

walk. It doesn＇t show that you＇re not genetically programmed to walk [and do walk, if you get the relevant kind of input that triggers it and are nototherwise disabled]. What Everett claims [that recursion is not the universal property of all human languages on the earth] probably isn＇t true anyway, buteven if it were, that just means this language [Pirahã]has limited lexical resources and is not using internal
Merge [recursion]. Well, maybe not: Chinese doesn＇t
use it for question-formation. English doesn＇t use a
lot of things; it doesn＇t use Baker＇s polysythesis option. No language uses all the options that are available.
(Chomsky 2012: 30)[...] Universal Grammar is not supposed to bewhat is universal among languages: it is supposed tobe the“toolkit”that a human child brings to learning
any of the languages of the world. [...] When you
have a toolkit, you are not obliged to use every toolfor every job [e.g. recursion]. Thus we might expectthat not every grammatical mechanism [e.g. recursion] provided by Universal Grammar appears in every language [e.g. Pirahã]. For instance, somelanguages make heavy use of case marking, and others don＇t; some languages make heavy use of fixed
word order, and others don＇t. We would like to saythat Universal Grammar makes both these possibilities available to the child; but only the possibilities
actually present in the environment come to realization in the child＇s developing grammar. [...] Learninga language can then be thought of roughly as likecustomizing the settings in a software package. [...]In any event, it is commonly understood that Universal Grammar provides possibilities, not just certainties, for the structure of the grammar the child is todevelop.
(Jackendoff 2002: 75)

The case of the tribe of people above is, however, hardly possible to discover as in the case of a species of bird which is mentioned below. Chomsky
says:
The language faculty confers enormous advantages on a species that possesses it. It is hardly likelythat some species has this capacity but has neverthought to use it until instructed by humans. That isabout as likely as the discovery that on some remoteisland there is a species of bird that is perfectly capable of flight but has never thought to fly until instructed by humans in this skill. Although not alogical impossibility, this would be a biological miracle, and there is no reason to suggest that it has taken place.
(Chomsky 1988: 38)

The same thing as this is also explained by Culicover and Jackendoff as follows:
The language faculty, developed over evolutionary time, provides human communities with a toolkit
of possibilities for cobbling together languages overhistorical time. Each language, in turn,“chooses”adifferent selection and customization of these tools
to construct a mapping between sound and meaning.
We will call this the Toolkit Hypothesis.
(Culicover and Jackendoff 2005: 5)

If this is true, then the case of Pirahãs will be
another biological miracle, although not a logicalimpossibility, and there is no reason to suppose that
Pirahãs do not use recursion although they have theability to do so.
But“if recursion doesn＇t have to appear in one
given language [e.g. Pirahã], then, in principle, it
doesn＇t have to appear in any language (Everett 2008:230 ), ”says Everett. This means that“ the uniqueproperty of human language [recursion] does not actually have to be found in any human language (Everett 2008: 230).”According to Everett,“grammars
without recursion precede grammars with recursion
evolutionarily [...] even in grammars with recursion,
nonrecursive structures are used in most environ-

Moreover, the same claim as the Toolkit Hypothesis is repeated by Chomsky himself as follows:
Well, if Everett were right, it would show that
Pirahã doesn ＇t use the resources that Universal
Grammar makes available [recursion]. But that＇s as
if you found a tribe of people somewhere who
crawled instead of walking. They see other people
crawl, so they crawl. It doesn＇t show that you can＇t― 28 ―

Chomsky and Everett

ments (Everett 2008: 236).”In short, recursion is not
the essential property of human language, claims Everett. Which is right, Chomsky or Everett?
If we make use of Chomsky＇s terminology, thenwe will be able to say that the Toolkit Hypothesis
may be paraphrased as follows: Pirahãs have an option of recursion in their innate Universal Grammar
but it is not realized in their I-language of Pirahã, sorecursion is not generated in their E-language of Pirahã. Universal Grammar is a biological endowment
at birth and I-language is the product with parameters of Universal Grammar set one way or anotherand E-language is generated by I-language. In otherwords, Chomsky insists that recursion does not
emerge in an E-language even though its mechanism
is built in Universal Grammar. Because an I-language does not always take advantage of it. On theother hand, Everett claims that recursion is not theuniversal property of human language because it is
not found in an E-language, Pirahã. So the problem
may be where we ﬁnd recursion: in Universal Grammar or E-language or I-language? Everett locates recursion in E-language and for Chomsky, recursion isan option in Universal Grammar. So, if Chomsky isright, the same may be true of other animals. It may
be possible that apes or bees have recursion but do
not use it, so recursion cannot be found in ape calls
or the bee language as in the case of Pirahã. In otherwords, if the Toolkit Hypothesis is right, then it will
be able to be applied to other creatures than humans.
This means that recursion can be found but is not
used, for example, in apes or bees. According toChomsky, it would be a biological miracle although
not a logical impossibility. Then, what is Chomsky＇s
reaction to this?
Moreover, we may be able to add the example
of relative pronouns to this matter. It is usually
thought that English has relative pronouns but Japanese does not. But some people assume that both
English and Japanese have relative pronouns, butthey cannot be observed in Japanese as in the case ofrecursion in Pirahã, where recursion is not found.
This is the same logic as that of the Toolkit Hypothesis. Are relative pronouns the common feature ofEnglish and Japanese or not? What should we thinkof this?

Everett notices this matter because he divides
UG into two types of Universal Grammar, UG-1 and
UG-2:
It is very important to understand this distinction
between the empirical UG-1 and the tautologicalUG-2. One helpful example showing the detachmentthat Chomsky sees between UG and empirical research is found in a statement of his in the February
1, 2009, edition of the Folha de São Paulo. Chomsky
told the newspaper that he believes that I purposely
mislead people about it. The form of his criticism of
me is quite interesting:Everett hopes that the readers do not understandthe difference between UG in the technical sense(the theory of the genetic component of humanlanguage) and the informal sense, which concerns properties common to all languages. The
speakers of Pirahã have all the same genetic
components as us, so Pirahã children can createa normal language. Suppose that Pirahã doesn＇t
permit this. It would be the same as discovering
a community that crawls but doesn＇t walk, sothat children that grow there only crawl andnever walk. The implications of this for human
genetics would be null.
Chomsky＇s remarks deserve close scrutiny here
because of their relevance to the demand by NP&R
[Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues] that I demonstrate
how my claims falsify UG and because they show
the difference between HC&F＇s [Hauser, Chomsky,
and Fitch＇s] UG-1 and UG-2. (Thanks to Paul Postal
for suggesting some of the remarks that follow.)
Again, we see that UG-2 not only makes no predictions, but also has little if any connection to linguistic data. Chomsky allows in this latter quote that
Pirahã could be as I describe it. Nothing in UG precludes this, he says. But then, of course, nothing in
UG prevents a third, a half, or even all languages being like Pirahã, lacking recursion, and so forth. Thismeans that there is no language nor any collection of
languages that could possibly disconﬁrm UG in the‘ technical sense＇. (Interestingly, if languages cannot
disconfirm Chomsky＇s view, then they also cannot
support it.)
Chomsky thus makes it clear that NP&R＇s state― 29 ―

Naoki ARAKI

ment that nothing about Pirahã does or even could
falsify UG refers to UG-2. This is because UG-2 isdeﬁnitional and therefore not falsiﬁable. But UG-1 isan empirical hypothesis, the core of language is recursion, and that is falsified if it is understood as
HC&F intend it, namely, as a hypothesis about language rather than cognition more broadly.
(Everett 2009: 439)

exception. Is Pirahã an exception or is recursion not
the universal property of human language?
8. Recursion is not what distinguishes

humans from other animals

Furthermore, even if just one recursion-less language existed, this would deny that recursion is auniversal property of human language, which otheranimals do not have:

As you can see, Chomsky＇s UG in the technicalsense is equivalent to Everett＇s UG-2 and Chomsky＇s
UG in the informal sense is to Everett＇s UG-1. So,even if Pirahã does not have recursion, it will be Everett＇s UG-1, or Chomsky＇s UG in the informal sensethat is refuted. On the other hand, Everett＇s UG-2, orChomsky＇s UG in the technical sense remains intact.

Most importantly, even if there were just one
non-recursive language, then the capacity for constructing recursive sentences could not be what explains why humans have language but other animals
do not.
(Everett 2012: 295)
As we have seen, if the Toolkit Hypothesis isright, then other creatures than humans may have recursion, which is thought to be the universal propertyof human language and which has not been found so
far in other animals. This means that recursion is notwhat distinguishes humans from other animals. Can
recursion explain why humans have language but
other animals do not?

7. Pirahã is an exception

Moreover, some researchers claim that Pirahã isan exception even if it is a recursion-less language:
Some researchers, however, claim that recursion
is crucial and that even if the recursion-less analysis
of Pirahã is correct, the language [Pirahã] is nothing
more than an exception. It is just an oddity. Pirahã isno‘ black swan,＇ they say. It could be an off-whiteswan, a slight variation from the norm that is irrelevant to the theory that all swans are white [the theory
that all human languages have recursion].
(Everett 2012:294)

9. Recursive Thinking

According to Everett, we humans have recursive
thinking, in other words, we can think recursively:[...] normal humans must be able to think that
other humans think. And they must be able to thinkthat other people know that other people think. Thatis one thought inside another thought of the same
type—recursive thinking.
(Everett 2012: 281)

Everett sharply criticizes such an idea that Pirahã is an exception:
If Pirahã were merely an exception, not a counterexample [to the idea that recursion is the universal
property of human language], [...] if we granted that
there could be one non-recursive grammar [thegrammar of Pirahã], then we would have to admitthat there could be another. But if there were anotherlanguage that lacked recursion, there could be more.
(Everett 2012: 295)

Furthermore, we humans have a desire to express our thoughts of other people＇s thoughts:
And they often want to tell other humans about
their thoughts of other people＇s thoughts. Suppose
you think that‘ Mary knows that I know that her
husband knows that we know that he is foolingaround. ＇ That is recursive thinking. Without it we
could not have such thoughts.
(Everett 2012: 281)

It is safe to say, as Everett mentions, that it leads
to the denial of the idea that recursion is the uniqueproperty of human language to consider Pirahã as anThen, how is our recursive thinking expressed?
― 30 ―

Chomsky and Everett

According to Everett, for example, in English recursion is used in sentences while in Pirahã recursion is
employed in stories. So it has nothing to do with
where recursion is used that we have recursive thinking:Thus, it is connected with the relation between
language and culture how our thought is expressedin language. So recursion in sentences is not the universal property of human language:
The key to understanding how grammar andreasoning fit together, whether talking about otherminds or anything else, is the ﬁt between a language
and its containing culture, society, and situation.
What this all means is that sentence recursion is not
crucial to the structures of human languages andthus, if this is correct, that recursion does not play
the role in natural languages that many linguists haveclaimed.
(Everett 2012: 294)

But it turns out that where the recursion is located in our languages—in our stories [Pirahã], in our
sentences [English], or both [English]—has very little to do with our ability to reason recursively.
(Everett 2012: 281)
Pirahã culture eliminates recursion from its
grammar by lexical convention and makes what is
one sentence in English a kind of small story:

So, language is, for Everett, the cultural tool not
the biological endowment as Chomsky insists.

Pirahã lacks all words of this type [think, believe, say, and want]. No verbs in Pirahã require asubordinate clause. This is one way that Pirahã culture can eliminate, by lexical convention, recursion
from its grammar. Rather than saying‘ John said that
he was coming,＇ the Pirahãs would say‘ John spoke.
He is coming.＇ That is ambiguous, making what is in
English a single sentence in effect a small story. Or
rather than say,‘ John thinks he is coming, ＇ theywould handle this the same way,‘ John spoke. I am
coming.＇ Like other Amazonian groups, the Pirahãs
tell us what they think that people are thinking or
what they themselves are thinking, by using the verb
‘ to speak,＇ putting words in other people＇s mouths toconvey their thoughts.
(Everett 2012: 287)

10. Recent Research on Pirahã

According to a paper issued in March 2016, it isreported that Pirahã cannot be conﬁrmed to have recursion although admitting this conclusion is tentative:
Our analysis has failed to ﬁnd strong support forsyntactically embedded structures [recursion] in Pirahã. We emphasize that any conclusions that can be
drawn from this corpus evidence must be highly tentative, due to the difficulty of working with a language [Pirahã] whose speakers are so difficult toaccess, as well as the computational challenges ofcharacterizing linguistic complexity. Our hope is thatthe analysis presented here, along with the release of
the annotated corpus, will promote further investigation into the formal properties of natural languages
and help to push the debate towards testable empirical claims.
(Futrell, Stearns, Everett, Piantadosi, and Gibson
2016: 18)

As Everett claims, in the Arabian Nights, stories
are also embedded in other stories. For example, inthe Hunchback’s Tale (Arabian Nights 1991: 32₇₄23), a young man＇s story is embedded in the Christian Broker’s Tale (Arabian Nights 1991: 33₄-₃48)
and another young man＇s story is placed in the Steward’s Tale (Arabian Nights 1991: 34₉-₃58). Moreover,a sickly youth＇s story is inside the Jewish Doctor’sTale (Arabian Nights 1991: 35₈-₃67) and a young
man＇s story is inserted in the Tailor’s Tale (ArabianNights 1991: 36₇-₃82). This is another example of recursion in the form of story. So stories in stories are
not limited in Pirahãs alone. Probably they are universal in all languages across the world.

Conclusion
Chomsky insists that recursion is the universal
property of human language although he claimed
discrete inﬁnity as the core property of human language instead of recursion before. But Everett doubts
Chomsky＇s claim because Pirahã does not have re― 31 ―

Naoki ARAKI

cursion at all. Against Everett＇s criticism of Chomsky, it is insisted that Pirahã does not take advantageof recursion or that Pirahã is an exception. Everett
responds to it that if recursion can be an option or an
exception, then recursion cannot be the universal
property of human language. According to Everett,recursion is used in syntax and stories in one language while it is employed only in stories in another.
So recursion in syntax is not the universal propertyof human language.
But this problem can be looked at from anotherangle: Where can recursion be located? Everett locates recursion in E-language (actual utterances) and
Chomsky situates it as an option in Universal Grammar (biological endowment). Everett explains thismatter as two types of Universal Grammar, UG-1 andUG-2. If Chomsky is right, then even the only one
property of some human language will be located in
UG-2 and it may not be realized in all of the otherlanguages. This means that whatever the property
may be, it is incorporated in UG-2 and that is, as Everett rightly points out, never veriﬁed. Does this leadto the denial of Chomsky＇s Universal Grammar? Because this means that his UG must incorporate every
property of human language whatever it may be.

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Everett, Daniel. Language: The Cultural Tool. Pantheon Books. 2012.
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Larsen, Richard K., Viviane Déprez, and Hiroko Yamakido. The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge University
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