Related papers: Linguistic evolution driven by network heterogenei…
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…
A formulation of bit-string models of language evolution, based on differential equations for the population speaking each language, is introduced and preliminarily studied. Connections with replicator dynamics and diffusion processes are…
Human communication systems, such as language, evolve culturally; their components undergo reproduction and variation. However, a role for selection in cultural evolutionary dynamics is less clear. Often neutral evolution (also known as…
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…
The distribution of human linguistic groups presents a number of interesting and non-trivial patterns. The distributions of the number of speakers per language and the area each group covers follow log-normal distributions, while population…
One proposed mechanism of language change concerns the role played by second-language (L2) learners in situations of language contact. If sufficiently many L2 speakers are present in a speech community in relation to the number of…
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 survival of endangered languages in complex language competition depends on socio-cultural status and honour endowed (by itself and by the other) among them. The restriction in the endorsement of this honour leads to language extinction…
The neutral theory of genetic and linguistic evolution holds that the relative frequencies of variants evolve by random drift. Neutral evolution remains a plausible null model of language change. In this paper we provide evidence against…
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 propagations of diseases, behaviors and information in real systems are rarely independent of each other, but they are coevolving with strong interactions. To uncover the dynamical mechanisms, the evolving spatiotemporal patterns and…
Mechanisms of pattern formation---of which the Turing instability is an archetype---constitute an important class of dynamical processes occurring in biological, ecological and chemical systems. Recently, it has been shown that the Turing…
All living languages change over time. The causes for this are many, one being the emergence and borrowing of new linguistic elements. Competition between the new elements and older ones with a similar semantic or grammatical function may…
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…
How do words change their meaning? Although semantic evolution is driven by a variety of distinct factors, including linguistic, societal, and technological ones, we find that there is one law that holds universally across five major…
Computational modelling with multi-agent systems is becoming an important technique of studying language evolution. We present a brief introduction into this rapidly developing field, as well as our own contributions that include an…
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.…
Populations have often been perceived as a structuring component for language to emerge and evolve: the larger the population, the more structured the language. While this observation is widespread in the sociolinguistic literature, it has…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
An in-depth analytic study of a model of language dynamics is presented: a model which tackles the problem of the coexistence of two languages within a closed community of speakers taking into account bilingualism and incorporating a…