Overview
[AI Summary]: This research investigates why human languages do not exhibit infinite center embedding despite recursion being considered a fundamental property of language. Lu Qian from Guangxi Normal University and Liu Haitao from Fudan University use dependency distance metrics to quantify syntactic complexity and demonstrate through corpus analysis and computational modeling that center embedding is limited to a maximum of three levels. Their analysis of 37,015 English sentences reveals that only 5.60% contain one-level center embedding, 0.0027% contain two-level embedding, and no sentences with three or more levels were found. The study concludes that working memory constraints, reflected in mean dependency distance values, fundamentally limit recursive structures in natural language, with complexity becoming cognitively unmanageable beyond three levels of embedding.
- Authors: Lu Qian (陆前), Liu Haitao (刘海涛)
- Institutions: Guangxi Normal University, Fudan University
- Year: 2025
- Journal: Contemporary Linguistics (当代语言学)
- Language: Chinese