Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T20:26:23.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A computer simulation of language families1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2008

PAULO MURILO CASTRO DE OLIVEIRA ,
DIETRICH STAUFFER ,
SØREN WICHMANN  and
SUZANA MOSS DE OLIVEIRA
PAULO MURILO CASTRO DE OLIVEIRA*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal Fluminense
DIETRICH STAUFFER*
Affiliation:
Cologne University
SØREN WICHMANN*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & Leiden University
SUZANA MOSS DE OLIVEIRA*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal Fluminense
*
Authors' addresses: (Castro de Oliveira & Moss de Oliveira) Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Av. Litorânea s/n, Boa Viagem, Niterói24210-340, RJ, Brazil. PMCO@IF.UFF.BR, suzana@if.uff.br
(Stauffer) Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Cologne, Germany. dstauff@thp.uni-koeln.de
(Wichmann) Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. wichmann@eva.mpg.de
Authors' addresses: (Castro de Oliveira & Moss de Oliveira) Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Av. Litorânea s/n, Boa Viagem, Niterói24210-340, RJ, Brazil. PMCO@IF.UFF.BR, suzana@if.uff.br
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents computer simulations of language populations and the development of language families, showing how a simple model can lead to distributions similar to those observed empirically by Wichmann (2005) and others. The model combines features of two models used in earlier work for the simulation of competition among languages: the ‘Viviane’ model for the migration of peoples and the propagation of languages, and the ‘Schulze’ model, which uses bit-strings as a way of characterising structural features of languages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , November 2008 , pp. 659 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

Work on this paper was carried out while Castro de Oliveira, Dietrich Stauffer and Suzana Moss de Oliveira were visiting Laboratoire PMMH, École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (10 rue Vauquelin, F-75231 Paris, France). The authors are grateful to JL's anonymous referees for their comments on the original submission and subsequent revisions.

References

REFERENCES

Abrams, Daniel & Strogatz, Steven H.. 2003. Modelling the dynamics of language death. Nature 424, 900.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arnold, Richard & Bauer, Laurie. 2006. A note regarding ‘On the power law distribution of language family sizes’. Journal of Linguistics 42, 373–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Oliveira, Paulo Murilo Castro, Stauffer, Dietrich, Welington, F., Lima, S., de Oliveira Sousa, Adriano, Schulze, Christian & de Oliveira, Moss Suzana. 2007. Bit-strings and other modifications of Viviane model for language competition. Physica A 376, 609–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Oliveira, Viviane M., Campos, R. A. Paulo, Gomes, A. F. Marcelo & Tsang, Ren Ing. 2006a. Bounded fitness landscapes and the evolution of the linguistic diversity. Physica A 368, 257–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Oliveira, Viviane M., Gomes, Mercelo A. F. Marcelo & Tsang, Ing Ren. 2006b. Theoretical model for the evolution of the linguistic diversity. Physica A 361, 361–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 2005. Genealogical language list. In Haspelmath, Martin, Dryer, Matthew, Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 584–643. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grimes, Barbara F. 2000. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 14th edn. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Holman, Eric W. 2004. Why are language families larger in some regions than in others? Diachronica 21, 57–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nettle, Daniel. 1998. Explaining global patterns of language diversity. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 354–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulze, Christian & Stauffer, Dietrich. 2006. Recent developments in computer simulations of language competition. Computing in Science and Engineering 8, 86–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulze, Christian, Stauffer, Dietrich & Wichmann, Søren. 2008. Birth, survival and death of languages by Monte Carlo simulation. Communications in Computational Physics 3, 271–294.Google Scholar
Sutherland, William J. 2003. Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species. Nature 423, 276–279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tuncay, Çeğlar. 2007. Physics of randomness and regularities for cities, languages & their lifetimes and family trees. International Journal of Modern Physics C 18, 1641–1658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, William S. Y. & Minett, James W.. 2005. Vertical and horizontal transmission in language evolution. Transactions of the Philological Society 103, 121–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren. 2005. On the power-law distribution of language family sizes. Journal of Linguistics 41, 117–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren & Saunders, Arpiar. 2007. How to use typological databases in historical linguistic research. Diachronica 24, 373–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren, Stauffer, Dietrich, Schulze, Christian & Holman, Eric W.. 2008. Do language change rates depend on population size? Advances in Complex Systems 11.3, 357–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Søren, Stauffer, Dietrich, Welington, F.Lima, S. & Schulze, Christian. 2007. Modelling linguistic taxonomic dynamics. Transactions of the Philological Society 105, 126–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zanette, Damian. 2001. Self-similarity in the taxonomic classification of human languages. Advances in Complex Systems 4, 281–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar