Reinhard Köhler

• Sinergeticeskaja lingvistika
• The book describes the systems theoretical framework of synergetic linguistics using the lexical subsystem of language as an illustrative example. The approach is motivated by its demand not only to decribe linguistic phenomena but also to provide a means to explain them. The basis of explanation is a functional one. Functional explanations as a special kind of deductive-nomologic explanation is presented in terms of the philosophy of science. Specifically, the book investigates several selected quantitative properties of lexical units: frequency, polysemy, length, polytextuality etc. and the properties of their inventories. These variables are studied in their interplay and their effects on each other. At the same time, the linguistic processes are described as "order parameters", i.e. macroscopic quantities which "enslave" the dynamic behavior of the microscopic linguistic units. These order parameters have the status of axioms and are interpreted linguistically as requirements of the languages' environment, i.e. the social systems which use a given language. The model and its parts are statistically tested on a text corpus and dictionaries.