Affordance competition in dialogue: the case of syntactic universals

In this paper, we explore the idea that independently developed Dynamic Syntax accounts of dialogue and interaction fit well within the general approach of radical embodied and enactive accounts of cognition (REEC). This approach enables a rethinking of the grounding of linguistic universal constraints, specifically tree structure restrictions, as the outcome of affordance competition, a general REEC sociocognitive mechanism underpinning action selection. Given this subsumption, we argue such an approach opens up a whole new area of language-related dynamic systems research.