Languages with applicative morphology vary in whether their applied arguments can stack, or “recurse.” Focusing primarily on Bantu languages, I argue that the availability of applicative recursion in a given language depends on abstract nominal licensing—in particular, on whether the applicative heads responsible for introducing applied arguments are nominal licensers. Applicative recursion therefore provides a novel diagnostic for the presence of abstract nominal licensing, which is argued to be driven not by Case but by ϕ-feature checking. The proposed approach to applicative recursion provides evidence for the role of abstract licensing in Bantu languages and has implications for approaches to double object symmetry as well as for recursion in causatives.

It is claimed in Key 2013 that Turkish, despite allowing multiple causative morphemes on a single complex verb, does not in fact allow causative recursion, where one causing event is embedded by another causing event. This squib argues against Key’s conclusion, using evidence from eventhood diagnostics to show that “double” causatives in Turkish encode two distinct, syntactically represented causing events in addition to the caused event. Thus, Turkish causatives are indeed recursive. This finding supports approaches to productive affixal causatives that allow recursive embedding of the same category over approaches that rely on a fixed functional hierarchy.