The Fate of Bilingualism in a Model of Language Competition

Abstract

In the general context of dynamics of social consensus, we study an agent based model for the competition between two socially equivalent languages, addressing the role of bilingualism and social structure. In a regular network, we study the formation of linguistic domains and their interaction across the boundaries. We analyse also a small world social structure, in order to capture the effect of long range social interactions. In both cases, a final scenario of dominance of one language and extinction of the other is obtained, but with smaller times for extinction in the latter case. In addition, we compare our results to our previous work on the agent based version of Abrams-Strogatz model.

Demography and Language Competition

“…The analysis of the Castelló et al (2007) model shows that neither bilingualism nor social structure is able to produce coexistence between the two equalstatus languages. Further, Castelló and co-workers concluded that bilingualism is not a stable strategy.…”

“…The Stauffer et al (2007) simulation model was extended by Castelló et al (2007) by introducing bilingualism and social structure. Castelló's agents were allowed to speak either one of the languages A or B or to speak both, and besides d-dimensional networks, there were small-world networks, which accounted for short-and long-range interactions.…”

“…Their aim was to extend the results from the continuous approach by analyzing the range of behaviors of language competition that can result from specifi c intervention mechanisms and initial conditions. Similar to the Castelló et al (2007) approach, Minett and Wang assumed that each agent had the…”

“…As already pointed out by Castelló et al (2007), most of the modeling approaches lack important mechanisms that act in the dynamics of language competition. One of them involves the emergence of new linguistic varieties resulting from, for example, code switching.…”

Simulación de procesos sociales basada en agentes software

“…En el campo de la lingüística es destacable un estudio comparativo basado en teoría de redes sociales (Castelló, 2007), en el marco de la evolución dinámica de lenguas en contacto, en un entorno de competencia lingüística. Entre los estudios políticos sobre conflictos fronterizos un buen ejemplo lo constituye (Cederman, 2003), con un análisis a nivel de superestructuras estatales sobre los agentes, mediante simulación de los cambios en las fronteras a nivel geopolítico.…”