The Structural Dynamics of Language

Abstract Pickering and Garrod (2004) are issuing a challenge that mod-els of language (both linguistic and psycholinguistic) be evaluated against their ability to reflect the use of language in dialogue. For current grammar formalisms, defined without any reference to the processing of language in context, it is not obvious how this challenge can be met. In this paper I sketch a grammar formalism, Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al 2001), in which syntax is defined as the progressive building up in time of a struc-tured representation of content as progressively established in context; I then show how this perspective allows an equally incremental and context-sensitive model of production; and finally I demonstrate how the dialogue patterns observed by Pickering and Garrod follow directly. 1 In this paper I argue that the structure of natural languages is intrin-sically dynamic, directly reflecting their use in real-time processing of in-formation; and I provide a sketch of a formal framework, Dynamic Syntax