Dynamical concepts like: attractor, lateral inhibition, competition, etc, support the development of various ideas about aspects of human linguistic capacities. Here are some examples.
1. Development of limb control - reaching, stepping, etc. Thelen shows how dynamical ideas (admittedly, in only a qualitative way) generalize into a framework for motor control.
2. `thinking about everyday events'
3. recognizing patterns in time.
4. producing speech - sequences of segments selected from the lexicon.
--modified from T. van Gelder and R. Port (`It's about time')in Port and van Gelder Mind as Motion (MIT Press, 1995), page 18. Freely reformatted.
``What general things do we already know about the nature of cognitive systems that suggest that dynamics will be the framework within which the most powerful models are developed?
We know at least these very basic facts:
(1) that cognitive processes always unfold in real time;
(2) that their behaviors are pervaded by both continuities and discretenesses;
(3) that they are composed of multiple subsystems which are simultaneously active and interacting;
(4) that their distinctive kinds of structure and complexity are not present from the very first moment, but emerge over time;
(5) that cognitive processes operate over many time scales and events at different time scales interact;
(6) and that they are embedded in a real body and environment;
The dynamical approach provides a natural framework for the description and explanation of phenomena with these broad properties.''