Language Change as a Complex Adaptive System - A study based on networks and ambiguities in the history of English

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23520605
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Tsurumi Junior College
• Principal Investigator: OGURA MIEKO 鶴見大学短期大学部, 歯科衛生科, 教授 (60074291)
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-28 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 語彙拡散理論 / 複雑適応体系 / 語彙体系 / スモールワールドネットワーク / 曖昧性 / 語順進化 / 多義語 / 左方前頭葉前部

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I have examined mechanisms of lexical diffusion in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon in the history of English from a perspective of complex adaptive systems (selection, self-organization, scaling of parameters, robustness and networks of connections, etc.) for the past decades. In the present study I further discussed that lexical diffusion is the fundamental mechanism of language evolution, synthesizing the following perspectives: (1) the impact of the polysemous links of the verbs on the organization of semantic graph which creates a historically robust small-world network, based on the data from Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009), (2) the lexical and syntactic ambiguities from an evolutionary perspective of sequential and combinatorial relationships in the prefrontal brain and the evolution of word order as resolution of these ambiguities, using near-infrared spectroscopy.

Free Research Field

英語史、言語変化