An Introduction to Linguistic Synergetics

Book excerpt: The book provides an introduction to some basic concepts of linguistic synergetics, viewed here as a new multidisciplinary research approach to language studies. It also advances diachronic linguosynergetics, focusing on principles and mechanisms of language change and development, and employing the methodological integrity of philosophy, linguistics and synergetics. Diachronic linguosynergetics endeavours to capture language in a state of change, when a language system follows a non-linear path, through numerous fluctuations and dissipation, leading out of chaos to order and stability. The book considers human language as an open, dynamic, non-linear, and self-organising system, with all its hierarchical subsystems and elements coherently interconnected and controlled by governing parameters. Special emphasis is laid on a variety of change rates on different language levels. As such, diachronic linguosynergetics is capable of addressing a broad range of issues concerning language change. It sheds new light on language development and permits better descriptions of phase transitions, or reconfigurations, of language as a synergetic megasystem.