Welcome!
Over the last several decades, many complex phenomena have been shown to arise through simpler interactions between system elements multiplied over time, rather than through some centralized control. Language at all levels of analysis shares relevant properties with other complex systems, and many language researchers have begun to explore the possibility that this new approach may provide significant breakthroughs in accounting for emergence and change of language patterns. Because the complex systems approach is in many respects fundamentally different from the more deterministic, mono-causal theories that linguists have been trained to use, this is a particularly productive moment to bring faculty and students together to share work and resources, to teach one another and to develop collaborations. This meeting has been organized to provide such an opportunity. Next year’s workshop is slated to take place at UC San Diego in the winter.
Many thanks to the University of Arizona Linguistics Department, the Program in Cognitive Science, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences College for their generous support of this workshop.
Communications Building, University of Arizona