递归是对特定类型的语言元素或语法结构的重复顺序使用。另一种描述递归的方法是语言递归。

更简单地说，递归还被描述为将一个组件放置在同一类型的另一个组件中的能力。

可以在序列中重复使用的语言元素或语法结构称为递归。

如何使用递归

"If you build an earthen home now, think of the wonder on the face of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchild!"

（Ianto Evans、Michael G.Smith和Linda Smiley，《手工雕刻的房子：建造Cob小屋的哲学和实践指南》，切尔西·格林，2002年）

"Some affixes are mildly recursive: re-re-write, anti-anti-war, great-great-grandmother. This type of morphological recursion (where the same affixal form is repeated without intervening morphemes) appears to be unique to this functional category across languages, though most ... affixes are not recursive." (Edward J. Vajda, "Referential and Grammatical Function in Morphological Typology."

（Zygmunt Frajzyngier、Adam Hodges和David S.Rood编著的《语言多样性与语言理论》，约翰·本贾明斯出版社，2005年）

"He can take a letter from you to her and then one from her to you and then one from you to her and then one from her to you and then one from you to her and then one ..."

（P.G.沃德豪斯，谢谢你，吉维斯，1934年）

"Didn't matter if the fe-fe was a VP, VIP, stay-at-home wife, his wife, his sister, a lover, an employee, an associate, a groupie, a counterpart, smart, fine, dumb, ugly, dumb and ugly, a model, a hooker, a Christian, his best friend, or his mother."

（玛丽·莫里森，他只是个朋友。肯辛顿，2003）

"The fact that English permits more than one adjective in a sequence in this manner is an example of a more general feature of languages that linguists call recursion. In English, prenominal adjectives are recursive. Simply put, this means that prenominal adjectives can be 'stacked,' with several appearing successively in a string, each of them attributing some property to the noun. In principle, there is no limit to the number of adjectives that can modify a noun. Or better, there is no grammatical limit."

（Martin J.Endley，《英语语法的语言学视角：英语教师指南》，信息时代，2010）

递归与意义

"In English, recursion is often used to create expressions that modify or change the meaning of one of the elements of the sentence. For example, to take the word nails and give it a more specific meaning, we could use an object relative clause such as that Dan bought, as in Hand me the nails that Dan bought. In this sentence, the relative clause that Dan bought (which could be glossed as Dan bought the nails) is contained within a larger noun phrase: the nails (that Dan bought (the nails)). So the relative clause is nested within a larger phrase, kind of like a stack of bowls."

（Matthew J.Traxler，《心理语言学导论：理解语言科学》，Wiley Blackwell，2012）

递归与无限

"[One] factor that encourages linguists to believe that human languages are infinite sets stems from a presumed connection between linguistic creativity and the infinite cardinality of languages. Note, for example, this statement by [Noam] Chomsky (1980: 221-222): ... the rules of the grammar must iterate in some manner to generate an infinite number of sentences, each with its specific sound, structure, and meaning. We make use of this 'recursive' property of grammar constantly in everyday life. We construct new sentences freely and use them on appropriate occasions ... He is suggesting that because we construct new sentences, we must be using recursion, so the grammar must generate infinitely many sentences. Note also the remark of Lasnik (2000: 3) that 'The ability to produce and understand new sentences is intuitively related to the notion of infinity.' No one will deny that human beings have a marvelous, highly flexible array of linguistic abilities. These abilities are not just a matter of being able to respond verbally to novel circumstances, but of being capable of expressing novel propositions, and of re-expressing familiar propositions in new ways. But infinitude of the set of all grammatical expressions is neither necessary nor sufficient to describe or explain linguistic creativity. ... The infinitude of human languages has not been independently established--and could not be. It does not represent a factual claim that can be used to support the idea that the properties of human language must be explicated via generative grammars involving recursion. Positing a generative grammar does not entail infinitude for the generated language anyway, even if there is recursion present in the rule system."

（Geoffrey K.Pullum和Barbara C.Scholz，“递归与无限声称”，《递归与人类语言》，Harry Van Der Hulst主编，Walter de Gruyter，2010）