Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper

TLDR

Language is a socially driven system shaped by human interaction and domain‑general cognition, with usage patterns influencing acquisition, use, and change, and forming a unified complex adaptive system that underlies diverse linguistic research areas. As a complex adaptive system, language comprises interacting speakers whose adaptive behaviors—shaped by past interactions, perceptual constraints, and social motivations—generate linguistic structures through interrelated patterns of experience, interaction, and cognition.

Abstract

Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of human interaction along with domain‐general cognitive processes shape the structure and knowledge of language. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has demonstrated that patterns of use strongly affect how language is acquired, is used, and changes. These processes are not independent of one another but are facets of the same complex adaptive system (CAS). Language as a CAS involves the following key features: The system consists of multiple agents (the speakers in the speech community) interacting with one another. The system is adaptive; that is, speakers’ behavior is based on their past interactions, and current and past interactions together feed forward into future behavior. A speaker's behavior is the consequence of competing factors ranging from perceptual constraints to social motivations. The structures of language emerge from interrelated patterns of experience, social interaction, and cognitive mechanisms. The CAS approach reveals commonalities in many areas of language research, including first and second language acquisition, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, language evolution, and computational modeling.