Courtroom attire
"Are you wearing a thong, madam?"
"A traditional one among my people, yes."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a hula hoop festooned with a hemp rope sling."
"What does 'festooned' mean?"
"I don't know."
Posted on 08/05/2019 7:53:05 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Here’s an example from every day speaking:
“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, Introduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)
Or even more to point of survival: “Hand me your extra spear so we can circle around both sides of the herd and kill that small mammoth nearest the rock pile. Does that example work?
The sine qua non of recursive
is Chimera, by John Barth, which,
hilariously, Amazon lists as $68.55
for a hardback.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28Barth_novel%29
like a stack of bowls.
Sure would!
Better yet (and more recursive), “Grab that spear you used to kill that saber tooth last week because there’s another one behind you!”
Eeeewwww....
Stomach festering!
Ha! The example of recursion that you provided illustrates the concept perfectly.
I just had never heard it called “recursion” before.
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