The invasion of language: emergence, change and death

Wang, William Yang; Minett, James W.

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.03.001

Cited by 79 publications

(72 citation statements)

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“…The model also does not distinguish the vertical and horizontal transmission of language, and ignores the impact of the behaviour of individual speakers in the population, focusing instead on the expected aggregate behaviour of the population as a whole. Despite these limitations, the model has stimulated a burst of research into the dynamics of language competition and diversity (e.g., Patriarca and Leppänen, 2004;Mira and Paredes, 2005;Wang and Minett, 2005;Schulze and Stauffer, 2006;Stauffer et al, 2006), much of it performed by non-linguists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling endangered languages: The effects of bilingualism and social structure

Minett

Wang

2008

Lingua

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling endangered languages: The effects of bilingualism and social structure

Minett

Wang

2008

Lingua

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126

121

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“…To expand the application scope of our language competition model, we propose language inheritance principle II to estimate the inheritance rates of competing languages in cases where sufficient direct data are lacking. This principle is inspired by the well-attested lexical diffusion dynamics in computational linguistics (26,27). This dynamics, derived from the epidemic model (29), uses a logistic curve to describe lexical diffusion, as in Eq.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both monolinguals and bilinguals are taken into account, and the empirical data for this calculation can be extracted from the surveys of speakers' language choices in communities. Language inheritance principle II, inspired by the well-attested lexical diffusion dynamics (26,27), adopts the logistic curve (28) to estimate the inheritance rates of competing languages. This makes the principle applicable in cases lacking sufficient data of speakers' language choices.…”

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confidence: 99%

Principles of parametric estimation in modeling language competition

Zhang

Gong

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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It is generally difficult to define reasonable parameters and interpret their values in mathematical models of social phenomena. Rather than directly fitting abstract parameters against empirical data, we should define some concrete parameters to denote the sociocultural factors relevant for particular phenomena, and compute the values of these parameters based upon the corresponding empirical data. Taking the example of modeling studies of language competition, we propose a language diffusion principle and two language inheritance principles to compute two critical parameters, namely the impacts and inheritance rates of competing languages, in our language competition model derived from the Lotka-Volterra competition model in evolutionary biology. These principles assign explicit sociolinguistic meanings to those parameters and calculate their values from the relevant data of population censuses and language surveys. Using four examples of language competition, we illustrate that our language competition model with thus-estimated parameter values can reliably replicate and predict the dynamics of language competition, and it is especially useful in cases lacking direct competition data.prestige | Fourier's law of heat conduction | Hardy-Weinberg genetic inheritance principle | logistic curve | lexical diffusion dynamics H ow to define informative parameters in mathematical models of real-world phenomena remains a tough problem; in particular, how to assign explicit meanings to parameters and interpret their values in models of social phenomena critically affects the explanatory power of these models. This issue becomes more serious in recent modeling studies of language dynamics (1-5), especially competition (the process whereby local tongues are being replaced by hegemonic languages due to population migration and sociocultural exchange) (6).Among the numerous modeling approximations of two-language competition (7-15), the most influential one was the Abrams and Strogatz (AS) model (8). It defined prestige (the socioeconomic status of the speakers of a language) of competing languages to determine the dynamics of language competition, and reported well-fitting curves to some historical data under a fixed range of prestige value. However, this abstract parameter lacked explicit sociocultural meanings; it remained unclear what were the characteristics of a language having a prestige value, say 1.2, and what was the sociocultural condition corresponding to the difference between two languages having prestige values, say 1.2 and 1.3, respectively. Lacking such empirical foundations, the prestige value had to be obtained via curve fitting, thus making this model useless in cases lacking sufficient empirical data. Although many recent models (9-15) extended the AS model in certain aspects [e.g., the Mira and Paredes (MP) model (9) incorporated bilinguals into competition, the Stauffer and Schulze (SS) model (10) adopted network structures to confine language contact, and the Minett and Wang (MW) model (11) revealed ...

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“…Nevertheless, the reviewed models fail to address crucial social and linguistic aspects. Wang and Minett (2005) made the criticism that these dynamic models do not account for bilingualism, sociolinguistic factors such as social structure, multiple registers of speech, and the effect of heterogeneous strategies, both at the level of individuals and at the level of policymakers. Following this critique, the second group of generalizations of the Abrams-Strogatz model dealt with a more realistic modeling of the process of language shift, in particular, the incorporation of bilingualism.…”

Section: Recent Modeling Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demography and Language Competition

Kandler

2009

Human Biology

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Attempts to describe language competition and extinction in a mathematical way have enjoyed increased popularity recently. In this paper I review recent modeling approaches and, based on these findings, propose a model of reaction-diffusion type. I analyze the dynamics of interactions of a population with two monolingual groups and a group that is bilingual in these two languages. The results show that demographic factors, such as population growth or population dispersal, play an important role in the competition dynamic. Furthermore, I consider the impact of two strategies for language maintenance: adjusting the status of the endangered language and adjusting the availability of monolingual and bilingual educational resources. Keywordslanguage competition, language extinction, language maintenance, population growth, population dispersal, reaction dispersal competition model, agent-based models. Cover Page FootnoteI thank Stephan Shennan and James Steele, the organizers of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (CECD) workshop "Demographic Processes and Cultural Change," for the opportunity to present this work to an expert audience. I am also grateful to James Steele for helpful discussions and to two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript. Funding was provided by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.This open access article is available in Human Biology: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol81/iss2/5 Demography and Language CompetitionAnne Kandler 1 Abstract Attempts to describe language competition and extinction in a mathematical way have enjoyed increased popularity recently. In this paper I review recent modeling approaches and, based on these fi ndings, propose a model of reaction-diffusion type. I analyze the dynamics of interactions of a population with two monolingual groups and a group that is bilingual in these two languages. The results show that demographic factors, such as population growth or population dispersal, play an important role in the competition dynamic. Furthermore, I consider the impact of two strategies for language maintenance: adjusting the status of the endangered language and adjusting the availability of monolingual and bilingual educational resources.Language competition and death is a phenomenon that can be observed worldwide. Linguists estimate that there are 5,000-6,700 languages in the world today, but because of an explosive spread of a few dominant languages (e.g., English or Chinese), at least half of them will become extinct in the 21st century (Krauss 1992). The processes that lead to the disappearance of languages have greatly accelerated over the past 200 years, and this worrying rate of extinction is probably unique to our time (Grenoble and Whaley 2006). A number of different socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors can be identifi ed as driving this decline of linguistic diversity. In the course of globalization and of recent trends for urbanization and lon...

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The invasion of language: emergence, change and death

Cited by 79 publications

References 45 publications

Modelling endangered languages: The effects of bilingualism and social structure

Modelling endangered languages: The effects of bilingualism and social structure

Principles of parametric estimation in modeling language competition

Demography and Language Competition

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