The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment.

Hans-Jörg Schmid The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment2020 Oxford University Press Oxford397 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-19-881477-1 (hardback) Formalists' view of the object of study of language as an abstract system is a premise for the classic dichotomy of langue and parole by Saussure and that of competence and performance by Chomsky. Part II (Chapters 7-10) takes a considerable step further to address conventionalization as a continual process of establishing and readapting regularities of communicative behavior among the members of a speech community. Chapter 12 opens a sequence of three chapters looking at the routinization of syntagmatic (Chapter 12), symbolic (Chapter 13), and pragmatic associations (Chapter 14). [Extracted from the article]