The Speech Communication in Evolutionary Language Dynamics

Language is a complex adaptive system: Speakers are agents who interact with each other, and their past and current interactions feed into speakers’ future behavior in complex ways.


The idea that language should be analyzed as a complex adaptive system is gaining currency, particularly among those researchers who are developing models of language behavior (e.g., Smith, Kirby, & Brighton, 2003; Steels, 2000). Research groups that have come together in the Five Graces group share this view (e.g., Baxter, Blythe, Croft, & McKane, 2006; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006; Ke & Holland, 2006). The Five Graces group defines a complex adaptive system as follows:

• The system consists of multiple agents interacting with one another.
• The system is adaptive -- that is, agents’ behavior is based on their past interactions, and current and past interactions together feed back into future behavior.
• An agent’s behavior is the consequence of competing factors from a wide range of environmental affordances and constraints.


The premier example of a model of a complex adaptive system is the evolutionary model originally developed and refined in biology by Charles Darwin. (...) we describe the theoretical basis of an application of this model to language behavior—in particular, the language change that naturally emerges from language behavior (Croft, 2000). A language is a complex adaptive system because of the way it is situated in its social context.