recursive?

[Tedwonny]

we can often hear the different genres of writing such as argumentative, narrative, descriptive...

What really is recursive? Dictionaries seem not to define it clearly in this respect.

Thanks

[5jj]

Recursive writing is not a genre, as far as I know.

Writing is Recursive

[BobK]

It's not a genre, as 5jj said; it's not like 'argumentative', or any of your other examples. Sometimes it just is. For example, this definition:

recursive - see 'recursive'

(Incidentally, i think the person who wrote that blog doesn't have a very clear idea of what 'recursive' means. In any useful sense of 'recursive', the generalization 'Writing is recursive' is nonsensical. The blog says that writing involves multi-tasking, involves simultaneous attenton to different stages of the same process, is sometimes reiterative...)

b

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Tedwonny,

I wonder if this is what you are referring to.

(1) A famous grammarian (linguist) named Noam Chomsky came up with the idea

of recursion.

(a) Ms. Kayla Sheridan defines it:

"The ability to endlessly string together embedded phrases is what separates

human language from animal communication."

Source on Web: Recursion, Culture and the Definition of Language.

(2) I found this example of recursion on the Web:

This is the mouse that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Source: English 2126: Modern English Grammar. The Noun P ...

(3) If you are interested in learning more, you may wish to google "recursion,"

"embedding," or "nesting."

Thank you for introducing this interesting topic to me.

[BobK]

This is what I've come to know as recursion. But it isn't the meaning used in the blog cited by 5jj. I don't know whether that is a widely accepted usage, or whether the word in that instance is just a victim of the profit motive

b

[konungursvia]

To understand the concept (which predates Chomsky by a long way) I'd go to the bookstore and have a look at this book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by D. Hofstadter. It's actually one of my favourite books (since I was about 16).

[Tedwonny]

Oh, thanks guys

No, it has nothing to do with Chomsky, Universal Grammar, Nativism...

It is a term used by some textbooks and it seems to be discribing the processes of writing more instead of a genre. What about discursive writing then?

[BobK]

Oh, thanks guys

No, it has nothing to do with Chomsky, Universal Grammar, Nativism...

It is a term used by some textbooks and it seems to be discribing the processes of writing more instead of a genre. What about discursive writing then?

Again, 'discursive' is one of the many adjectives that could be applied to certain types of writing, but it's not what that blog's about.

b

[BobSmith]

In mathematics and computer science, recursion is a very powerful and useful concept, whereby complex problems can be reduced to simpler and smaller versions of the same problem.

Might I also recommend "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood", by James Gleick, my favorite book in recent years.