Related papers: On religion and language evolutions seen through m…
We investigate mechanisms for language change within a framework where an unconventional signal for a meaning is first innovated, and then subsequently propagated through a speech community to replace the existing convention. We appeal to…
One of the most intriguing features of language is its constant change, with ongoing shifts in how meaning is expressed. Despite decades of research, the factors that determine how and why meanings evolve remain only partly understood.…
This paper is a quantitative analysis of the data collected globally by the World Value Survey. The data is used to study the trajectories of change in individuals' religious beliefs, values, and behaviors in societies. Utilizing random…
Individuals signal aspects of their identity and beliefs through linguistic choices. Studying these choices in aggregate allows us to examine large-scale attitude shifts within a population. Here, we develop computational methods to study…
We use Monte Carlo simulations and assumptions from evolutionary game theory in order to study the evolution of words and the population dynamics of a system comprising two interacting species which initially speak two different languages.…
Note: This paper includes examples of potentially offensive content related to religious bias, presented solely for academic purposes. The widespread adoption of language models highlights the need for critical examinations of their…
The understanding of language competition helps us to predict extinction and survival of languages spoken by minorities. A simple agent-based model of a sexual population, based on the Penna model, is built in order to find out under which…
Human languages evolve continuously, and a puzzling problem is how to reconcile the apparent robustness of most of the deep linguistic structures we use with the evidence that they undergo possibly slow, yet ceaseless, changes. Is the state…
The evolution of language has been a hotly debated subject with contradicting hypotheses and unreliable claims. Drawing from signalling games, dynamic population mechanics, machine learning and algebraic topology, we present a method for…
In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the…
Why do human languages change at some times, and not others? We address this longstanding question from a computational perspective, focusing on the case of sound change. Sound change arises from the pronunciation variability ubiquitous in…
We employ an agent-based model for cultural dynamics to investigate the effects of spatial heterogeneities on the collective behavior of a social system. We introduce heterogeneity as a random distribution of defects or imperfections in a…
Conversation is a cornerstone of social connection and is linked to well-being outcomes. Conversations vary widely in type with some portion generating complex, dynamic stories. One approach to studying how conversations unfold in time is…
Evolutionary game theory is a mathematical toolkit to analyse the interactions that an individual agent has in a population and how the composition of strategies in this population evolves over time. While it can provide neat solutions to…
Large Language Models (LLMs) can be deployed in situations where they process positive/negative interactions with other agents. We study how this is done under the sociological framework of social balance, which explains the emergence of…
One of the fundamental principles driving diversity or homogeneity in domains such as cultural differentiation, political affiliation, and product adoption is the tension between two forces: influence (the tendency of people to become…
Many complex adaptive systems contain a large diversity of specialized components. The specialization at the level of the microscopic degrees of freedom, and diversity at the level of the system as a whole are phenomena that appear during…
Discovering and quantifying the drivers of language change is a major challenge. Hypotheses about causal factors proliferate, but are difficult to rigorously test. Here we ask a simple question: can 20th Century changes in English English…
Languages and genes are both transmitted from generation to generation, with opportunity for differential reproduction and survivorship of forms. Here we apply a rigorous inference framework, drawn from population genetics, to distinguish…
Quantifying the speed of linguistic change is challenging due to the fact that the historical evolution of languages is sparsely documented. Consequently, traditional methods rely on phylogenetic reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a…