ABSTRACT
This paper takes the conceptual tools of artificial life to examine a question which has been intractable in Chomskian linguistics: the status and characterization of changing and variable natural languages. How do languages cohere across speakers who each have a somewhat different "internalized language"? Because languages are dynamic and variable systems, linguists have been unable to define or characterize in an explicit way the "languages" we commonly refer to, such as 'English' and 'Serbo-Croatian'. "Languages" will not stand still; they keep evolving, and they vary considerably from speaker to speaker, from community to community, from social situation to social situation. A definition or characterization of a language, then, cannot be static.
