El lexicón como origen del carácter dinámico de los sistemas de escritura

Abstract

Within the framework of current linguistics it seems now possible to regard written language as a dynamic adaptive system which would be shaped in the mental lexicon of users from the experiences of the linguistic usage. Despite that, planning of variation and artificial selection seem to play a major role in written expression evolutionary dynamics because of the stronger linkage of writing to formal contexts. In this author’s proposal for a theoretical model, those actions would be functionally linked to usage by means of inherent value linguistic attitudes generated during the processes of reading and writing, so that they don’t invalidate the adaptive nature of the system. Various functional motivations, ultimately dependent on the sociocultural and environmental context, would occasionally affect the lexicon organization; and the lexicon would reciprocate by spontaneously approaching and distancing the involved linguistic units in order to adapt to the adjustments. Those shifts, in turn, would be founded on eight possible basic movements and countermovements of graphical extension and retraction which are described in this work. They allow to locally modifying the system’s relational architecture, so that the written expressions can adapt. Adaptation, in any case, would be modulated by the sedimentation achieved by the functional trends in their social environment, in procedures that can be regarded as niche construction processes.