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THE LANGUAGE OF CHAOS

ELEONORA BILOTTA

Department of Linguistics, University of Calabria, Italy

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and

PIETRO PANTANO

Department of Mathematics, University of Calabria, Italy

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218127406014988Cited by:23 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

This work presents a linguistic approach to the understanding of chaos. The idea comes from our work on translating into sounds and music the complexity of chaotic systems, as with Chua's attractors. Therefore, working with sounds, we have used a standardization criterion in order to detect only some of the features of the richness of chaos. This method involves the selection of a limited number of sounds, which, in turn, allow for the creation of other components of the system at different levels of organization, as with natural language. Thus, phonetic, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels, linked by a grammar of an "artificial chaotic language" are defined. Each linguistic unit of the artificial language presents networks of interrelated phenomena since for each of them, it is possible to detect its path length, tracing a graph of the mutual relationships of the system's components. We found that there is interaction among the different levels of the chaotic language. Furthermore, some traits of the dynamics of the evolution of language in human infants are found in the main routes to chaos. In this emergent dynamics, mutations, struggle for the fittest, natural selection, and the relative distribution of linguistic entities in genetic landscapes are observed. On the basis of this, a possible bridge of connection between the physical and the mental worlds may be developed.

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