An approach to language as a complex system. New issues in Historical Linguistics

Abstract

In this paper I argue that: (1) The functionalist approach to language change presently undergoes a crisis possibly due to its ambivalent perspective on language. In fact, the literature combines both the classical approach to language as a set of products together with a still unclear approach of language as a set of processes. (2) The construction of a theory on language as a complex and dynamic set of dependency-free systems is needed to overcome the crisis. Principles governing conversation will be seen as also governing such systems. (3) According to my proposal, a new agenda on language history can be organized, focusing on processes and products arranged in four systems: lexicalization and Lexicon, semantization and Semantics, discursivization and Discourse, grammaticalization and Grammar.