DO LANGUAGE CHANGE RATES DEPEND ON POPULATION SIZE?

Sã˜ren Wichmann (), Dietrich Stauffer (), Christian Schulze and Eric W. Holman ()
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Sã˜ren Wichmann: Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; Languages and Cultures of Indian America (TCIA), PO Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
Dietrich Stauffer: Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Germany
Christian Schulze: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, USA
Eric W. Holman: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, USA

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2008, vol. 11, issue 03, pages 357-369

Abstract: An earlier study [24] concluded, based on computer simulations and some inferences from empirical data, that languages will change the more slowly the larger the population gets. We replicate this study using a more complete language model for simulations (the Schulze model combined with a Barabási–Albert network) and a richer empirical dataset [12]. Our simulations show either a negligible or a strong dependence of language change on population sizes, depending on the parameter settings; while empirical data, like some of the simulations, show a negligible dependence.

Keywords: WALS; computer simulation; diffusion; change rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008

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