Language in Complexity: The Emerging Meaning PDF
Preview Language in Complexity: The Emerging Meaning
Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis Series Editor: Alessandro Sarti Francesco La Mantia Ignazio Licata Pietro Perconti Editors Language in Complexity The Emerging Meaning Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis Series editor Alessandro Sarti, CAMS Center for Mathematics, CNRS-EHESS, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11247 Francesco La Mantia Ignazio Licata (cid:129) Pietro Perconti Editors Language in Complexity The Emerging Meaning 123 Editors Francesco LaMantia Pietro Perconti Dipartimento di ScienzeUmanistiche Dipartimento di ScienzeCognitive Universitàdi Palermo Universitàdi Messina Palermo Messina Italy Italy Ignazio Licata Institute for ScientificMethodology ISEM c/oCNR Palermo Italy ISSN 2195-1934 ISSN 2195-1942 (electronic) Lecture Notesin Morphogenesis ISBN978-3-319-29481-0 ISBN978-3-319-29483-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29483-4 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016940898 ©SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2017 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontainedhereinor foranyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade. Printedonacid-freepaper ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAGSwitzerland To Franco Lo Piparo and Bernard Victorri Contents PartI ComplexityandLinguisticTheory:EpistemologicalQuestions 1 The Game of Complexity and Linguistic Theorization. . . . . . . . . . 3 David Piotrowski and Y.-M. Visetti 2 Continuity in the Interactions Between Linguistic Units. . . . . . . . . 29 Gilles Col, Rossana De Angelis and Thierry Poibeau 3 Modeling Language Change: The Pitfall of Grammaticalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Quentin Feltgen, Benjamin Fagard and Jean-Pierre Nadal 4 The Case for Cognitive Plausibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Pietro Perconti Part II Complexity, Semiotics and Enunciation Theory 5 System and Structure. Semiotics as Encyclopaedic Theory of Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Claudio Paolucci 6 Hjelmslev and the Stratification of Signs and Language. The Morphodynamical Approaches to Semiotic Complexity. . . . . . 99 Antonino Bondì 7 From Topology to Quasi-Topology. The Complexity of the Notional Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Francesco La Mantia Part III Linguistic Complexity: Physics, Computation and Biology 8 Fiat Lux Versus Fiat Lumen: Quantum Effects in Linguistic Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Fortunato Tito Arecchi vii viii Contents 9 Two Ways into Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Andrea Zeppi 10 Language and Brain Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Alessio Plebe and Vivian M. De La Cruz Introduction Preliminary Questions The book deals with devoted to three key questions concerning the relationship between complexity and natural language. Briefly, such questions are: (a) What kind of complexity for natural language? (b) Which theory of language in the perspective of complexity? (c) Whatsortsofmethodsandmodelsintheanalysisoftheobservedphenomena? All the essays in this volume show the reference to complexity as a constant element. However, the use of the singular may not be entirely appropriate. Let us see the reason why. What Does “Complexity” Mean? In the period between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the new century, the word “complexity” was used to mean a variety of research programs aimed at different purposes, domains of investigation, and explanatory strategies; such as qualitative theory of dynamical systems, fractal geometry, physics of emergent processes, andcellular automata, to name a few. Aslightly deeper analysis on this fleeting sketch would also show that, in each of the above-mentioned fields, the internaldistinctionsoperatingwithinthekey-conceptsareresponsableforsuchbig and significant differences. The concept of emergence offers, in this sense, an exemplary case: it was introduced to manage novelty and unpredictability, which are peculiar of the so-called «systemic properties», but it was later articulated in severalotherdirections.Inparticular,wehavetomentioncomputationalemergence to indicate those types of unpredictability produced by an imperfect knowledge of the initial conditions of a given system—but precisely for this reason «tame- able», i.e. compatible with the «possibility to compute step by step»—by a given ix x Introduction model—the dynamics of the system. Instead, there has been talk of observational (or intrinsic) emergence to indicate those types of unpredictability that—far from being«tameable»inthespecifiedsense—involvea«deviation»betweentheactual behaviorofthesystemandtheonedescribedbytheadoptedmodel.Notonlythat: thetwoformsofemergences(forwhich,seeBaasandEmmeche1997;Licata2005, 2008) admit a large variety of intermediate cases. Among other things, a certain ambiguity in the terminology has increased the misunderstandings that already proliferated around the concept. Thus some authors, such as Lichtenstein (2014), haveused«computationalemergence»todenotethepatternsofinteractionthatare examinedinthecontextofArtificialLife,whileothers,asCariani(1992),usedthe expression «emergence-relative-to-a-model», instead of «observational emer- gence». In other words, this particular case (and many others, which we do not discusshere)clearlyshowsthat“complexity”referstoanetworkofplurivocaland stratifiedconcepts(such astheoneofemergence).That’swhysomecanthinkthat theuseofthesingular“complexity”isnotonlyinappropriate,butalsoincautiousin epistemological terms. Howtojustifyourchoicetoputthesingularnameinthetitle?Webelievethatit is possible to respond by advancing two reasons: the former belongs to the semisecular debate around the repertoire of concepts that has been made available bytheabove-mentioneddisciplinesandthelatter,oncontrary,belongstothedebate thatthisbookwouldlike,toacertainextent,toinaugurate.Letusstartfromthefirst one. Varieties of Complexity Accordingtothescholarsindynamicalsystems,fractals,cellularautomata,etc.,the word “complexity” represents a convenient umbrella term. The choice of the sin- gular is firstly justified primarily by a practical reason: the ability to evoke syn- thetically a plurality of different research programs and well individuated on the theoretical level. But there is more: this choice not only is the outcome of a conventionalagreementamongthemembersofoneormorescientificcommunities, but also the result of a careful reflection on the network of deep (and often unex- pected) affinities that connect the disciplines and the involved concepts. Just consider some few cases, it is worth remembering that a large portion of fractal geometry is an integral part of the qualitative theory of dynamical systems: the states of stability of certain classes of systems are instantiated from regions of the space of the phases that have fractal dimension—and which are called «strangeattractors»(or«fractalattractors»tout-court).Inaddition,significantparts of the qualitative theory of dynamic systems occupy in their turn a leading role in the formal apparatus of the physics of the emergent processes: some peculiar properties of the attractors—of all the attractors, either strange or classical—are fundamentaltodescribe/modelemergentphenomena.Amongthese,thepropertyof structuralstability(Thom1972;Stewart1993;Devaney1996)thatcaptures,onthe
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