CONTRIBUIÇÕES DA FÍSICA ESTATÍSTICA E DO FORMALISMO TERMODINÂMICO PARA A MODELAGEM DA AQUISIÇÃO E MUDANÇA LINGÜÍSTICA

Abstract

This paper presents the main objectives of a multidisciplinary research project conducted by researchers of Brazilian, American and European Universities. The basic question of the project concerns the role played by prosody in language acquisition and change. We report on the advances that have been achieved with the adoption of a theoretical framework based on Statistical Physics for the definition of the linguistically intuitive notion of preferential prosodic patterns.