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Dynamics On and Of Complex Networks pp 145–166Cite as

The Structure and Dynamics of Linguistic Networks

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Human beings as a species are quite unique to this biological world, for they are the only organisms known to be capable of thinking, communicating and preserving potentially an infinite number of ideas that form the pillars of modern civilization. This unique ability is a consequence of the complex and powerful human languages characterized by their recursive syntax and compositional semantics [40]. It has been argued that language is a dynamic complex adaptive system that has evolved through the process of self-organization to serve the purpose of human communication needs [80]. The complexity of human languages has always attracted the attention of physicists, who have tried to explain several linguistic phenomena through models of physical systems (see e.g., [32, 42]).

Like any physical system, a linguistic system (i.e., a language) can be viewed from three different perspectives [52]. On one extreme, a language is a collection of utterances that are produced by the speakers of a linguistic community during the course of their interactions with other speakers of the same community. This is analogous to the microscopic view of a thermodynamic system, where every utterance and its corresponding context contributes to the identity of the language, i.e., the grammar. On the other extreme, a language can be characterized by a set of grammar rules and a vocabulary. This is analogous to a macroscopic view. Sandwiched between these two extremes, one can also conceive of a mesoscopic view of language, where linguistic entities, such as the letters, words or phrases are the basic units and the grammar is an emergent property of the interactions among them.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While it is true that syntactic dependencies have a tendency to avoid crossing, there are systematic exceptions to that generalization in languages with relatively free constituent order. In German, for example, about one-third of all relative clauses are extraposed, thus creating cross dependencies.

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  1. Microsoft Research India, 560080, Sadashivnagar, Bangalore, India

    Monojit Choudhury

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, 72130, Kharagpur, India

    Animesh Mukherjee

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    Choudhury, M., Mukherjee, A. (2009). The Structure and Dynamics of Linguistic Networks. In: Ganguly, N., Deutsch, A., Mukherjee, A. (eds) Dynamics On and Of Complex Networks. Modeling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4751-3_9

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