a.
b.
c.
d.
dass
dass
that
er
er
er
er
he
beginnt
fängt
den
den
the
den
den
Brief
Brief
letter
Brief
Brief
beginnt
an.fängt
begins
∅
an
'(that) he begins with the letter'
| Gisbert Fanselow,
2004
COMPLEXITY THEORY
- (Acquisition) Chaos / complexity theory was first brought to the attention of second-language acquisition researchers
in the US with the pathbreaking article by Diane Larsen-Freeman (1997) that offered an alternative to the simplistic input-output, linear, information processing model of second language acquisition. It has been followed by a host of other studies that flesh out general principles of complexity / dynamic systems
theory as applied to SLA (see Larsen-Freeman 2020, de Bot et al. 2007, Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008, Larsen-Freeman 2011, a.o.). In 1997, Larsen-Freeman spelled out principles of a chaos / complexity theory for language learning, elaborating on some of them in 2011:
- Complex systems (like the weather, economic systems, human learning) are open and dynamic.
Complex "systems" have no distinct boundaries; they exist only because of the fluxes that feed them, and they disappear in the absence of such fluxes. One could
therefore say that a complex system is dynamic rather than static; it exists only in the interaction between things and is therefore not itself a thing (Osberg 2008).
- Complex systems operate under conditions that are not in equilibrium.
When you learn one additional piece of knowledge, this new knowledge doesn't just add itself to the other things you acquired previously. The equilibrium you thought
you had reached in your prior state of knowledge gets disrupted as one new piece of knowledge reconfigures the whole picture.
- Change / dynamism are central: The systems adapt both through interaction with the environment and through internal reorganization / self-organization.
Complex systems are systems because they are comprised of many elements or agents, which interact. Despite the linear nature of textbooks and the sequential order of items on the syllabus, learning does not grow in chapters or units that one can check off, test, and consider "acquired". Each new item presented in a new chapter is
related to an item learned earlier, but on a more complex plane, because one can now illuminate the item from more angles in light of other items acquired since then. This most important principle of complexity theory has been glossed generally in the following way: "The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules" (Gleick 1987/2008).
- The strength of the interactions changes over time: Therefore, there are often multiple routes possible between components, mediated in different ways.
Unlike learning historical or mathematical facts, learning how to communicate in a second language is variously successful within an individual's biography and
among individuals. complexity theory looks at the whole
ecology of learning: the learner in interaction with current others (teacher, textbook, fellow learners, native speakers), with absent or with past others (through texts), with his / her perceptions of present and past others, of past and present selves, and with whole discourses about the language, its speakers, its writers and the ideologies and worldviews they vehiculate.
- The complexity of complex systems is emergent: It is not built into any one element or agent, but rather arises from their interaction.
Through soft assembly and co-adaptation, patterns emerge or self-organize. As the biologist Sandra Mitchell writes: "Self-organization refers to any set of processes
in which order emerges from the interaction of the components of system without direction from external factors and without a plan of the order embedded in an
individual component" (Mitchell 2003). These patterns or performance stabilities are transformed with further usage. In other words, you don't learn the rules and
then apply them; instead, the rule emerges out of the interaction itself.
| Claire Kramsch, 2012
- (Acquisition) The introduction of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) into the realm of applied linguistics has attracted attention to the unpredictability and uniqueness of second language development among learners
(Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2007, Verspoor et al. 2011). According to this theory, language consists of numerous interconnected systems where the whole system can be drastically impacted by small changes in one subsystem or in the initial state of the system (de Bot et al. 2007, van Geert and Dijk 2002). | Soheil Behdarvandirad, 2024
- (Example)
○ With Complexity Theory, or Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), as it is called
when applied to second language development), the shape that language takes is deferred, always in process, ever-emerging dynamically from interaction. It is helpful to conceive of language as displaying "patterns in the flux," like an eddy in a mountain stream, where the water droplets are continually flowing through while the pattern endures. CDST posits a post-structural ecological
view, in which the spatiotemporal context is seen as playing an integral role in affecting development. For this reason, it is counterproductive to separate the learner from the learning process. Individual differences are truly person-oriented, even phenomenological, and mutable.
Variability in intra- and inter-individual performance is ubiquitous. Equifinality, autopoiesis, self-organization, interconnectedness, co-adaptation, transdisciplinarity—all are core, foundational features of open complex systems. | Diane Larsen-Freeman, 2019
* COMPLEXONSET
- (Optimality Theory) A markedness constraint:
* COMPLEX ONSET
Don't produce complex onsets (CCV-).
| Paul Boersma and Clara Levelt, 2000
- (Examples)
○ In OT, allowing complex onsets amounts to saying that the constraint militating against complex onsets, namely *COMPLEXONSET, is crucially dominated to the effect that complex onsets surface in the language. This apparent when the constraint interacts with the phonological constraint active
in the language.
- * Min-σ
Minor syllables are prohibited.
- MAXIO
Every segment of the input has a correspondent in the output. (No phonological deletion.)
- DEPIO
Every segment of the input has a correspondent in the output. (No epenthesis.)
- * COMPLEXONSET
More than one consonant in the onset position is prohibited.
* Min-σ ≫ MAXIO ≫ DEPIO ≫ * COMPLEXONSET
Moroccan Arabic
Input:
/bka/ 'cry'
| MAXIO
| *Min-σ
| DEPIO
| *COMPLEXONS
|
| a. bə.ka
|
|
| *
|
|
| ☞ b. bka
|
|
|
| *
|
| c. bk
| *!
|
|
|
|
| d. b.ka
|
| *!
|
|
|
Candidate (a) and candidates (c-d) and are ruled out as they violate the higher-ranked constraints DEPIO and MAXIO, respectively. Faithful to the input and incurring no violation to none of the
undominated constraints, candidate (b) is selected as the optimal, the surface form. Interestingly,
*COMPLEXONSET has no say as to the well-formedness of the selected or the ruled out candidates. As has been noted earlier, this constraint is inactive, as the language allows complex onsets. | Ayoub Loutfi, 2016
○ In an underlying word-initial consonant cluster,
*COMPLEXONSET is in conflict with the faithfulness constraints MAX-IO (Input segments must have counterparts in the output) and DEP-IO (The output must preserve all segments present in the input). | Somdev Kar, 2012
○ This paper focuses on four strategies of onset reduction employed by a single child (4;0-4;4) acquiring Polish: deletion, coalescence, metathesis, and gemination.
The OT account makes it possible to envisage the four strategies as different surface responses to the undominated *COMPLEXOnset which militates against onset clusters. The choice of a particular strategy as well as its restriction to a particular word position is not random but follows from the interplay between * COMPLEXOnset, sonority-based syllable structure constraints (Margin Hierarchy, CONTACT LAW), context-sensitive markedness constraints (CODA CONDITION, *Nasal-Fricative) and faithfulness constraints. | Beata Łukaszewicz, 2007
Page Last Modified August 30, 2026