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Is it possible to develop a `physics of language' which can explain the spatial, temporal and social patterns we see, and which can predict future change like we forecast the weather? Such a theory is likely to involve ideas from…
We investigate the dynamics of two agent based models of language competition. In the first model, each individual can be in one of two possible states, either using language $X$ or language $Y$, while the second model incorporates a third…
If language evolved by sexual selection to display superior intelligence, then we require conversational skills, to impress other people, gain high social status, and get a mate. Conversational skills include a Theory of Mind, a sense of…
We perform statistical analysis of the phenomenon of neology, the process by which new words emerge in a language, using large diachronic corpora of English. We investigate the importance of two factors, semantic sparsity and frequency…
The historical interplay between societies are governed by many factors, including in particular spreading of languages, religion and other symbolic traits. Cultural development, in turn, is coupled to emergence and maintenance of…
Despite their tremendous success in many applications, large language models often fall short of consistent reasoning and planning in various (language, embodied, and social) scenarios, due to inherent limitations in their inference,…
Languages vary widely in how meanings map to word forms. These mappings have been found to support efficient communication; however, this theory does not account for systematic relations within word forms. We examine how a restricted set of…
As an integral part of our culture and way of life, language is intricately related to migrations of people. To understand whether and how migration shapes language formation processes we examine the dynamics of the naming game with…
Language is far more than a communication tool. A wealth of information - including but not limited to the identities, psychological states, and social contexts of its users - can be gleaned through linguistic markers, and such insights are…
A key feature of human theory-of-mind is the ability to attribute beliefs to other agents as mentalistic explanations for their behavior. But given the wide variety of beliefs that agents may hold about the world and the rich language we…
Social groups with widely different music tastes, political convictions, and religious beliefs emerge and disappear on scales from extreme subcultures to mainstream mass-cultures. Both the underlying social structure and the formation of…
In recent times, the research field of language dynamics has focused on the investigation of language evolution, dividing the work in three evolutive steps, according to the level of complexity: lexicon, categories and grammar. The Naming…
The meaning of a slang term can vary in different communities. However, slang semantic variation is not well understood and under-explored in the natural language processing of slang. One existing view argues that slang semantic variation…
In large asexual populations, multiple beneficial mutations arise in the population, compete, interfere with each other, and accumulate on the same genome, before any of them fix. The resulting dynamics, although studied by many authors, is…
In this paper, we study how an agent's belief is affected by her neighbors in a social network. We first introduce a general framework, where every agent has an initial belief on a statement, and updates her belief according to her and her…
In social sciences, there is currently no consensus on the mechanism for cultural evolution. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for the researches in the field. Here we perform statistical analyses on…
The preservation of endangered languages is a widely discussed issue nowadays. Languages represent essential cultural heritage and can provide valuable botanical, biological, and geographical information. Therefore, it is necessary to…
The dynamical evolution of many economic, sociological, biological and physical systems tends to be dominated by a relatively small number of unexpected, large changes (`extreme events'). We study the large, internal changes produced in a…
This paper introduces how human languages can be studied in light of recent development of network theories. There are two directions of exploration. One is to study networks existing in the language system. Various lexical networks can be…
The purpose of this study is to find evidence for supporting the hypothesis that language is the mirror of our thinking, our prejudices and cultural stereotypes. In this analysis, a questionnaire was administered to 537 people. The answers…