Some reflections on the notion of recursion

The paper examines the different ways in which the notion of ‘recursion’ has been conceived and defined in linguistics, from Chomsky’s early works to the present day. Two meanings appear to especially stand out: recursion as an iterative operation and recursion as self-embedding of structures. Furthermore, it is argued that a particular type of self-embedding, namely the clausal one, has been the focus of attention of most linguists, independently of the theoretical frameworks they subscribe to.