Synergetic Linguistics

Quantitative and synergetic linguistics belong to the most productive and interesting research branches of modern approaches to language. Synergetic linguistics considers language as a self-organizing and self-regulating system (Köhler 1986, 2005), which dynamically adapts to the changing needs of a given language community. This dynamic process of adaptation can lead to the development of new structures for communicative functions required, or to the elimination of elements which are not required any longer, but which may eventually be used for other purposes. Synergetic linguistics has been developed with the explicit aim not only to describe the emergence and development of linguistic elements, structures, and properties, but also to explain them in terms of a process (not dissimilar to biological evolution). The present anthology with its 20 contributions written by 26 internationally renowned authors offers a representative insight into and survey over current scientific research in this fascinating area. The contributions discuss a wide range of issues on the basis of data from typologically quite different languages: this comprises detailed phonological, morphological, lexicographical, syntactic and semantic analyses of individual linguistic phenomena, as well as text linguistic studies. Moreover, there are a number of articles which use the synergetic approach to deal with problems that are relevant for other disciplines, both in the humanities and other sciences. They reflect the interdisciplinary nature of synergetic research and demonstrate that synergetic linguistics can provide an important impetus for the study of literature, semiotics, musicology, forensic linguistics, computational linguistics, and others.