LINGUIST List 5.476

Sun 24 Apr 1994

Sum: Chaos linguistics

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , chaos linguistics
2. Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Chaos References

I received a few references on chaos linguistics after my request on LINGUIST
two weeks ago, but even more requests to post what I had found. A lot of
people -- both online and off -- expressed interest in chaotic modelling and
suggested "there may be a lot of work to do." I also received messages from
recent PhD recipients who felt that their dissertations addressed this topic;
I am not including their names or addresses below because they didn't give me
permission to but I would encourage them to post messages of their own.

_Physique du Sens_, by Jean Petitot-Cocorda, Paris, editions du CNRS, 1992.

"Fields of Attraction in Phonology," by KP Monahan, in _The Last Phonological
Rule_, ed. by J. Goldsmith, 1993.

_A Dynamics System Approach to Development_, by Linda Smith and Esther Thelen,
MIT Press, 1993.

_A Dynamics SYstem Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action_, by
Linda Smith and Esther Thelen, MIT Press, forthcoming.

"Chaotic Dynamics of Linguistic-like Processes at the Syntactical and
Semantic Levels: In the Pursuit of a Multifractal Attractor," by John S.
Nicolis and Anastassis A. Katsakis, in _Studies of Nonlinear Phenomena in the
Life Sciences_, ed. by Bruce West, 1993.

"Self-organizing processes and the explanation of phonological universals,"
by B. Lindblom, P. MacNeilage, and M. Studdert-Kennedy, in _Explanations of
Linguistics_, ed by B. Butterworth, B. Comrie, and D. Dahl, 1983.

_Linguistic Dynamics_, ed. by T. Ballmer, de Gruyter, 1984.

For good introductory explanations of chaos and reviews of work with chaos in
their respective fields, see:

"Institutional Dynamics, Deterministic Chaos, and Self-Organizing Systems," by
Michael J. Radzicki, in Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, 1993.

"Chaos, Self-organization, and Psychology," by Scott Barton, in American
Psychologist, January 1994.

There is probably more material out there than what I have found in the last
two weeks. I hope this bibliography is somewhat helpful for people interested
in chaos and might initiate some conversations on LINGUIST. Please send me
anything else that comes to mind. Thanks to everyone who responded.

Michael-Jean Erard
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Texas at Austin

I appreciate M-J Erard's posting on chaos linguistics. In my search for
these, I encountered a couple of typos that I can share and save others
extra work in locating them:

A Dynamic System Approach to Development, by Linda B. Smith and Esther
Thelen, MIT 1993 [not 'Dynamics']

The book edited by Bruce J. West is entitled _Patterns, information and
chaos in neuronal systems_ (World Scientific, 1993). _Studies of nonlinear
phenomena in life science_ is the series title, of which this is Vol. 2.

_Explanations for language universals_, ed. Brian Butterworth, Bernard
Comrie, Osten Dahl, Mouton 1984.

_Linguistic dynamics: discourses, procedures, and evolution_, ed. Thomas
T. Ballmer, de Gruyter, 1985.