Complexity in Language
Developmental and Evolutionary Perspectives

This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Salikoko S. Mufwene (Edited by), Christophe Coupé (Edited by), François Pellegrino (Edited by)

9781107686625, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 May 2019

263 pages, 27 b/w illus.
23 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.45 kg

The question of complexity, as in what makes one language more 'complex' than another, is a long-established topic of debate amongst linguists. Recently, this issue has been complemented with the view that languages are complex adaptive systems, in which emergence and self-organization play major roles. However, few students of the phenomenon have gone beyond the basic assessment of the number of units and rules in a language (what has been characterized as 'bit complexity') or shown some familiarity with the science of complexity. This book reveals how much can be learned by overcoming these limitations, especially by adopting developmental and evolutionary perspectives. The contributors include specialists of language acquisition, evolution and ecology, grammaticization, phonology, and modeling, all of whom approach languages as dynamical, emergent, and adaptive complex systems.

1. Complexity in language: a multifaceted phenomenon Salikoko S. Mufwene, François Pellegrino and Christophe Coupé
2. How robotic agents agree to communicate Luc Steels and Katrien Beuls
3. Self-organization in language Bart de Boer
4. A complex adaptive systems approach to language and brain Tom Schoenemann
5. Evolutionary complexity of social cognition, semasiographic systems, and language William Croft
6. Quantitative analyses of phonological datasets Christophe Coupé, Egidio Marsico and François Pellegrino
7. Phonological acquisition as emergence Barbara Davis
8. Language choice in a multilingual society: a view from complexity science Lucía Loureiro-Porto and Maxi San Miguel
9. Complexity in/of language: bases for a dynamic socio-cognitive view Albert Bastardas-Boada.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Phonetics, phonology [CFH], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Linguistics [CF], Language [C]