Do language change rates depend on population size?
Physics and Society
2007-06-14 v1
Abstract
An earlier study (Nettle 1999b) concluded, based on computer simulations and some inferences from empirical data, that languages will change the more slowly the larger the population gets. We replicate this study using a more complete language model for simulations (the Schulze model combined with a Barabasi-Albert net- work) and a richer empirical dataset (the World Atlas of Language Structures edited by Haspelmath et al. 2005). Our simulations show either a weak or stronger dependence of language change on population sizes depending on the parameter settings, and empirical data, like some of the simulations, show a weak dependence.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0706.1842,
title = {Do language change rates depend on population size?},
author = {Soeren Wichmann and Dietrich Stauffer and Christian Schulze and Eric W. Holman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0706.1842},
year = {2007}
}