Introduction

The Columbia School of Linguistics is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its human users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between hypothesized linguistic meanings and pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics.

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