Complex Natural Systems for Language

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk; William A. Kretzschmar

doi:10.18290/rh237106.4s

Published : 2023-07-24

Vol. 71 No. 6sp (2023)

Complex Natural Systems for Language

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4884-3448

William A. Kretzschmar

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7173-5624

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh237106.4s

Abstract

In this paper we want to show how complex systems theory can inform the theoretical development in natural phonology. This development leads us to propose complex natural systems modelling for language. We explain how complex systems help us understand both theoretical concepts from natural phonology, for example the concept of preference, as well as variation in language data, for example in English vowel realizations and Polish consonant clusters. We select from our respective research areas those exemplifications which clearly demonstrate substantial variation in language use.

Keywords:

complex systems, natural linguistics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, phonotactics

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Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk

dkasia@amu.edu.pl
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4884-3448

Affiliation:

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań Poland

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk is Full Professor and Vice-Rector for research of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She was Dean of the Faculty of English. She has published extensively (ca. 160 publications) on phonology, phonetics and language acquisition. In her works she has been pursuing and advocating the Natural Linguistic approach to language. Her books include A Theory of Second Language Acquisition within the Framework of Natural Phonology, Beats-and-Binding Phonology. Her recent co-authored book is Phonotactics and Morphonotactics of Polish and English. She is Editor-in-Chief of Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics and organizes Poznań Linguistic Meetings. She was a Senior Fulbright scholar in 2001–2002 (University of Hawai’i at Manoa) and was a visiting scholar at the University of Vienna (1991–94, 1998). She is a member of Academia Europaea, Agder Academy, Linguistic Committee of PAN, a corresponding member abroad of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2013–2014, she was President of Societas Linguistica Europaea. She has supervised 22 PhD dissertations.

William A. Kretzschmar

kretzsch@uga.edu
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7173-5624

Affiliation:

University of Georgia United States

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. teaches English as Willson Professor in Humanities at the University of Georgia. He also has an appointment at the University of Oulu. His major publications include Exploring Linguistic Science, The Emergence and Development of English, The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, Language and Complex Systems, The Linguistic of Speech, The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, and The Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States. He edited the Linguistic Atlas Project, a large American dialect project, for 34 years. He is also active in corpus linguistics, where he directed corpus and text encoding activities for a National Cancer Institute grant to study tobacco documents. He has been influential in development of digital methods for analysis and presentation of language variation, including the application of complexity science