Full-text

URL: http://www.arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0512588

Cached: PDF-534K

SAVE AS an easy-to-recall long filename:

Filename format: author--year--title   PDF-534K

Filename format: author--year--title--journal|proceedings|...--pages   PDF-534K

Related links

Authoritative: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.73.046118   (Publisher's PDF... likely be available here.)

Source: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0512588

Web search: Google Web Search   ::   Google Scholar

Within this site: References (48)

Abstract

We present a mathematical formulation of a theory of language change. The theory is evolutionary in nature and has close analogies with theories of population genetics. The mathematical structure we construct similarly has correspondences with the Fisher-Wright model of population genetics, but there are significant differences. The continuous time formulation of the model is expressed in terms of a Fokker-Planck equation. This equation is exactly soluble in the case of a single speaker and can be investigated analytically in the case of multiple speakers who communicate equally with all other speakers and give their utterances equal weight. Whilst the stationary properties of this system have much in common with the single-speaker case, time-dependent properties are richer. In the particular case where linguistic forms can become extinct, we find that the presence of many speakers causes a two-stage relaxation, the first being a common marginal distribution that persists for a long time as a consequence of ultimate extinction being due to rare fluctuations.

@article{baxter06utteranceSelectionModel,
  author={Gareth J. Baxter and Richard A. Blythe and William Croft and Alan J. McKane},
  title={Utterance Selection Model of Language Change},
  journal={Physical Review E},
  year={2006},
  volume={73},
  pages={046118},
  doi={10.1103/PhysRevE.73.046118},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/baxter06utteranceSelectionModel.html}
}

HOME   ::  Journal List   ::   Article	Comments to: junwang4 you-know-at gmail.com	Last update: 2/2/08