LANGUAGE AS A SCALE-FREE NETWORK

Abstract

The article deals with linguistic synergetics as a new multidisciplinary research approach to the study of language complexity and language development. The author shows that language is a synergetic system; and as such, it can be described in the terms of synergetics. From a synergetic perspective, human language is considered an open, dynamic, non-linear, self-organising system with all its hierarchical subsystems and elements coherently interconnected and controlled by governing parameters. The concept of a scale-free network with a cluster structure is used to represent the notion of non-linearity inherent to language subsystems, especially the word-stock, and to explain the highest rate of changes within the latter.