here - Linguistic Society of America

SymposiumFriday, 4 JanuaryLanguage and Complex Adaptive SystemsClarendon/Berkeley9:00 – 10:30 AMOrganizers:Participants:William Kretzschmar (University of Georgia)Diane Larsen-Freeman (University of Michigan)Allison Burkette (University of Mississippi)William Kretzschmar (University of Georgia)Diane Larsen-Freeman (University of Michigan)In Mitchell's (2009:13) definition, a complex system is "a system in which large networks of components with no central controland simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation vialearning or evolution." Complex systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), have received a great deal oftransdisciplinary attention, especially since 1984, when the Santa Fe Institute was founded. In linguistics, CAS received earlyallusive discussion: Lindblom, MacNeilage, and Studdert-Kennedy published a 1984 paper on self-organizing processes inphonology; Hopper presented his seminal paper on "Emergent Grammar" in Berkeley in 1987; Langacker published "A Usage-Based Model" for cognitive linguistics in 1988. Gradually more papers attempting to use CAS in linguistics appeared in the 1990s(van Geert 1991, Mohanan 1992; Larsen-Freeman 1997; Lightfoot 1999). In the 2000’s, CAS language issues expanded.Mufwene used CAS in his argument about evolutionary biology as a metaphor for language change (2001, 2008; see also, Croft2000), as has Bybee (e.g., 2006; 2010). Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008) discussed complex systems and languageacquisition. Kretzschmar (2009) demonstrated how complex systems constitute speech, focusing on nonlinear distributions andscaling properties. Finally, Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2009) assembled a collection of papers which brought a CAS perspective tobear on a variety of linguistic topics, including sentence processing and the evolution of brain and language. In this symposium,we will articulate some basic ideas of complex systems and present three applications to particular problems of interest tolinguists in order to highlight ways in which CAS can contribute insights to linguistics. Importantly, we believe that complexitytheory defines the relationship between language in use and any generalizations we may wish to make about it, which address theperennial problem in linguistics of the contrast between language as human behavior and language as system.We will start the symposium with a general introduction to basic terms in CAS such as "attractors" and "emergence" (as fromLarsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008), and also apply those principles to language in the form of nonlinear frequency distributionsand scale-free networks (as from Kretzschmar 2009).Diane Larsen-Freeman will then discuss in "A CAS Perspective on Language Acquisition”—how learners soft assemble theirlanguage resources (Thelen and Smith 1994) while interacting with a changing environment. As learners do so, their languageresources change. She will propose that learning a language involves the constant enactment and adaptation of language-usingpatterns, which emerge in response to the affordances in a dynamic communicative situation.Allison Burkette will then present "Complexity from a Historical Perspective." Her talk will show linguists how speech changesover time within a community according to the prediction of complexity theory (as in Burkette 2001, 2009, 2011), with anemphasis on the essential connection between language and changing physical culture.Finally, Bill Kretzschmar will discuss "Complex Systems and Empirical Linguistics" to demonstrate how complexity theoryimproves our understanding of sampling and measurement, and how nonlinear empirical distributional patterns of linguisticfeatures can be important for cognitive and grammatical choices.Abstracts:Allison Burkette (University of Mississippi)Bill Kretzschmar (University of Georgia)Diane Larsen-Freeman (University of Michigan)Introduction to language and complex adaptive systemsComplex systems are dynamic, nonlinear, and open systems. They are made up of numerous components which interact with oneanother to produce an overall system through self-organization. The system exhibits properties that are not the sum of itsindividual components. Constantly adapting to changing intra- and extra-systemic conditions, hence the name “complex adaptive95