Related papers: Evolutionary forces in language change
Some species exhibit very high levels of DNA sequence variability; there is also evidence for the existence of heritable epigenetic variants that experience state changes at a much higher rate than sequence variants. In both cases, the…
What happens when a new social convention replaces an old one? While the possible forces favoring norm change - such as institutions or committed activists - have been identified since a long time, little is known about how a population…
Traditional linguistic theories have largely regard language as a formal system composed of rigid rules. However, their failures in processing real language, the recent successes in statistical natural language processing, and the findings…
It is generally believed that, when a linguistic item acquires a new meaning, its overall frequency of use in the language rises with time with an S-shaped growth curve. Yet, this claim has only been supported by a limited number of case…
The selection pressures that have shaped the evolution of complex traits in humans remain largely unknown, and in some contexts highly contentious, perhaps above all where they concern mean trait differences among groups. To date, the…
The analysis of thousands of time series in different languages reveals that word usage presents oscillations with a prevalence of 16-year cycles, mounted on slowly varying trends. These components carry different information: while similar…
Language change involves the competition between alternative linguistic forms (1). The spontaneous evolution of these forms typically results in monotonic growths or decays (2, 3) like in winner-take-all attractor behaviors. In the case of…
Our understanding of evolution is shaped strongly by how we conceive of its fundamental causes. In the original Modern Synthesis, evolution was defined as a process of shifting the frequencies of available alleles at many loci affecting a…
Gene expression in cells is stochastic, yet differentiation is robust. We propose a mechanism in which frustrated genes with weakly stable intermediate expression undergo noise-driven switching between basins of attraction, followed by…
Evolution is a dynamic process. The two classical forces of evolution are mutation and selection. Assuming small mutation rates, evolution can be predicted based solely on the fitness differences between phenotypes. Predicting an…
Neural codes appear efficient. Naturally, neuroscientists contend that an efficient process is responsible for generating efficient codes. They argue that natural selection is the efficient process that generates those codes. Although…
To learn about the past from a sample of genomic sequences, one needs to understand how evolutionary processes shape genetic diversity. Most population genetic inference is based on frameworks assuming adaptive evolution is rare. But if…
Languages emerge and change over time at the population level though interactions between individual speakers. It is, however, hard to directly observe how a single speaker's linguistic innovation precipitates a population-wide change in…
Complex systems, such as life and languages, are governed by principles of evolution. The analogy and comparison between biology and linguistics\cite{alphafold2, RoseTTAFold, lang_virus, cell language, faculty1, language of gene, Protein…
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…
In subdivided populations, migration acts together with selection and genetic drift and determines their evolution. Building up on a recently proposed method, which hinges on the emergence of a time scale separation between local and global…
The environment in which a population evolves can have a crucial impact on selection. We study evolutionary dynamics in finite populations of fixed size in a changing environment. The population dynamics are driven by birth and death…
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.…
Phenotype of biological systems needs to be robust against mutation in order to sustain themselves between generations. On the other hand, phenotype of an individual also needs to be robust against fluctuations of both internal and external…
Human languages are rule governed, but almost invariably these rules have exceptions in the form of irregularities. Since rules in language are efficient and productive, the persistence of irregularity is an anomaly. How does irregularity…