Article published in:
Distributed LanguageEdited by Stephen J. Cowley
[Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3] 2009
► pp. 653–676
Symbols as constraints
The structuring role of dynamics and self-organization in natural language
Joanna Raczaszek-Leonardi | University of Bologna
The paper draws a parallel between natural language symbols and the symbolic mode in living systems. The inextricability of symbols and the dynamics with which they are functionally related shows that much of their structuring is due to dynamics and self-organization. It is also stressed that important factors that determine the shape of language structure lie outside individual mind/brains and they draw on time-scales quite different from those of phenomenological experience. Analysis of language into units and subsystems is thus not straightforward, since they show functionality on many levels and many time-scales. Finally it is recognized that, as a specific and specialized system of inter-individual coordination, natural language is many hierarchical levels away form simpler forms of information transmission in biological systems.
Keywords: symbol, symbolic structure, constraints, control, measurement, dynamics, natural language
Published online: 02 December 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17.3.09ras
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17.3.09ras
Cited by
Cited by 35 other publications
Acuña-Fariña, J. Carlos
2016. Opportunistic processing of language.
Language Sciences 57 ► pp. 34 ff. 
Barebina, Natalia
2018. Linguoecological Aspect of Studying the Toponimic Lexis of the Baikal Region.
Theoretical and Practical Issues of Journalism 7:3 ► pp. 429 ff.
Borchmann, Simon
2018. Utterances as tool-mediated specifications of affordances - ecological pragmatics.
Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 124 ff.
Borchmann, Simon
2019. The spectator bias in the linguistic descriptions of information structure.
Language Sciences 76 ► pp. 101180 ff.
Conceição, Manuel Celio & Elisa Caruso
2022.
In Advances in Interdisciplinary Language Policy [Studies in World Language Problems, 9],
► pp. 216 ff.
Cowley, Stephen & Luarina Nash
2013. Language, interactivity and solution probing: repetition without repetition.
Adaptive Behavior 21:3 ► pp. 187 ff.
Cowley, Stephen J.
2011. Taking a Language Stance.
Ecological Psychology 23:3 ► pp. 185 ff.
Deacon, Terrence W. & Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi
2019. Abandoning the code metaphor is compatible with semiotic process.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 42
Fusaroli, Riccardo, Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi & Kristian Tylén
2014. Dialog as interpersonal synergy.
New Ideas in Psychology 32 ► pp. 147 ff.
Kimmel, Michael, Dayana Hristova & Kerstin Kussmaul
2018. Sources of Embodied Creativity: Interactivity and Ideation in Contact Improvisation.
Behavioral Sciences 8:6 ► pp. 52 ff.
Kimmel, Michael & Christine Irran
2022. Decision-making in Shiatsu bodywork: complementariness of embodied coupling and conceptual inference.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21:2 ► pp. 245 ff.
KOK, KASPER & ALAN CIENKI
2017. Taking simulation semantics out of the laboratory: towards an interactive and multimodal reappraisal of embodied language comprehension.
Language and Cognition 9:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Lassiter, Charles
2016. Aristotle and distributed language: capacity, matter, structure, and languaging.
Language Sciences 53 ► pp. 8 ff.
Loaiza, Juan M., Sarah B. Trasmundi & Sune V. Steffensen
2020. Multiscalar Temporality in Human Behaviour: A Case Study of Constraint Interdependence in Psychotherapy.
Frontiers in Psychology 11
Neumann, Martin & Stephen J. Cowley
2013.
In Cognition Beyond the Brain,
► pp. 13 ff.
Neumann, Martin & Stephen J. Cowley
2017.
In Cognition Beyond the Brain,
► pp. 175 ff.
Nölle, Jonas, Riccardo Fusaroli, Gregory J. Mills & Kristian Tylén
2020. Language as shaped by the environment: linguistic construal in a collaborative spatial task.
Palgrave Communications 6:1
ORMAN, JON
2016. Distributing mind, cognition and language: exploring the (un)common ground with integrational linguistics.
Language and Cognition 8:1 ► pp. 142 ff.
Rohlfing, Katharina J. & Iris Nomikou
2014. Intermodal synchrony as a form of maternal responsiveness.
Language, Interaction and Acquisition 5:1 ► pp. 117 ff.
Rączaszek-Leonardi, Joanna
2012.
In LAWS, LANGUAGE and LIFE [Biosemiotics, 7],
► pp. 295 ff.
Rączaszek-Leonardi, Joanna
2012. Types of Integration in a Theory of Language.
Psychology of Language and Communication 16:2 ► pp. 79 ff.
Rączaszek-Leonardi, Joanna, Iris Nomikou, Katharina J. Rohlfing & Terrence W. Deacon
2018. Language Development From an Ecological Perspective: Ecologically Valid Ways to Abstract Symbols.
Ecological Psychology 30:1 ► pp. 39 ff.
Steffensen, Sune Vork
2012. Care and conversing in dialogical systems.
Language Sciences 34:5 ► pp. 513 ff.
Steffensen, Sune Vork
2015. Distributed Language and Dialogism: notes on non-locality, sense-making and interactivity.
Language Sciences 50 ► pp. 105 ff.
Steffensen, Sune Vork & Alwin Fill
2014. Ecolinguistics: the state of the art and future horizons.
Language Sciences 41 ► pp. 6 ff.
Taylor, Talbot J. & Jasper C. van den Herik
2021. Metalinguistic exchanges in child language development.
Language Sciences 88 ► pp. 101434 ff.
Tison, Remi & Pierre Poirier
2021. Communication as Socially Extended Active Inference: An Ecological Approach to Communicative Behavior.
Ecological Psychology 33:3-4 ► pp. 197 ff.
van den Herik, J.C. (Jasper)
2022. The reflexive roots of reference.
Language Sciences 89 ► pp. 101446 ff.
Van Den Herik, Jasper C.
2018. Attentional actions – an ecological-enactive account of utterances of concrete words.
Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 90 ff.
van den Herik, Jasper C.
2021. Rules as Resources: An Ecological-Enactive Perspective on Linguistic Normativity.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20:1 ► pp. 93 ff.
Wacewicz, Sławomir & Przemysław Żywiczyński
2015. Language Evolution: Why Hockett’s Design Features are a Non-Starter.
Biosemiotics 8:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Wallot, Sebastian
2016. Understanding reading as a form of language-use: A language game hypothesis.
New Ideas in Psychology 42 ► pp. 21 ff.
Waters, Dennis P.
2012. From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins.
Language Sciences 34:5 ► pp. 507 ff.
Worgan, Simon F.
2011. Towards an artificial model of ‘languaging’: reviewing the distributed language hypothesis.
Language Sciences 33:1 ► pp. 229 ff.
Zubek, Julian, Michał Denkiewicz, Agnieszka Dębska, Alicja Radkowska, Joanna Komorowska-Mach, Piotr Litwin, Magdalena Stępień, Adrianna Kucińska, Ewa Sitarska, Krystyna Komorowska, Riccardo Fusaroli, Kristian Tylén & Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi
2016. Performance of Language-Coordinated Collective Systems: A Study of Wine Recognition and Description.
Frontiers in Psychology 7
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.