A computer simulation of language families
Physics and Society
2008-08-25 v2
Abstract
This paper presents Monte Carlo simulations of language populations and the development of language families, showing how a simple model can lead to distributions similar to the ones observed empirically. The model used combines features of two models used in earlier work by phycisists for the simulation of competition among languages: the "Viviane" model for the migration of people and propagation of languages and the "Schulze" model, which uses bitstrings as a way of characterising structural features of languages.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0709.0868,
title = {A computer simulation of language families},
author = {Paulo Murilo Castro de Oliveira and Dietrich Stauffer and Soeren Wichmann and Suzana Moss de Oliveira},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.0868},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
15 pages including numerous figures; for a linguistic journal. Revised form to be published in Journal of Linguistics