Influence of geography on language competition
Physics and Society
2009-11-13 v2
Abstract
Competition between languages or cultural traits diffusing in the same geographical area is studied combining the language competition model of Abrams and Strogatz and a human dispersal model on an inhomogeneous substrate. Also, the effect of population growth is discussed. It is shown through numerical experiments that the final configuration of the surviving language can be strongly affected by geographical and historical factors. These factors are not related to the dynamics of culture transmission, but rather to initial population distributions as well as geographical boundaries and inhomogeneities, which modulate the diffusion process.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0807.3100,
title = {Influence of geography on language competition},
author = {Marco Patriarca and Els Heinsalu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.3100},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
typos in contact information have been corrected - text/figures not changed