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The Dynamics of the Linguistic System

Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment

Hans-Jörg Schmid author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:9th Jan '20

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The Dynamics of the Linguistic System cover

This volume outlines a model of language that can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. The core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed by the interaction between three components: usage, the communicative activities of speakers; conventionalization, the social processes triggered by these activities and feeding back into them; and entrenchment, the individual cognitive processes that are also linked to these activities in a feedback loop. Hans-Jörg Schmid explains how this multiple feedback system works by extending his Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, showing how the linguistic system is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. Fulfilling the promise of usage-based accounts, the model explains how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage. The book is exceptionally broad in scope, with insights from a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. It provides a coherent account of the role of multiple factors that influence language structure, variation, and change, including frequency, economy, identity, multilingualism, and language contact.

...the book provides a comprehensive definition of what the language system is and where it locates * Kun Yang and Fei Wang, Southwest Universuty, Cognitive Linguistic Studies - John Benjamins Publishing Company *
this book is groundbreaking because it is a usage-based account of the linguistic system... Scholars can apply Schmid's model as a theoretical framework for a whole range of empirical studies. * Shuang Zhang, Huping Zhang, and Philippe Humblé, Review of Cognitive Linguistics *
This is a ground-breaking magnum opus and a cornerstone of future linguistic thinking and theorizing. * Edgar W. Schneider, English Language and Linguistics *
The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment...pioneers the systematic examination of how usage, conventionalization and entrenchment interact to create the linguistic system....Put at its briefest, Schmid proposes the EC-Model by analogizing the way language works as a Tinguely machine, contributing to our understanding of the nature and location of the linguistic system. The theoretical and methodological implications of the model are worth exploring by scholars in many fields, such as functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, socio-linguistics, psycho-linguistics, etc. * Xiaoming Dong, Harbin Engineering University, China, Journal of Pragmatics *

ISBN: 9780198814771

Dimensions: 236mm x 160mm x 30mm

Weight: 848g

432 pages