Modelling linguistic taxonomic dynamics

Wichmann, Soren; Stauffer, Dietrich; Lima, F. Welington S.; Schulze, Christian

Modelling linguistic taxonomic dynamics

Authors

Wichmann, Soren

Stauffer, Dietrich

Lima, F. Welington S.

Schulze, Christian

Description

This paper presents the results of the application of a bit-string model of languages (Schulze and Stauffer 2005) to problems of taxonomic patterns. The questions addressed include the following: (1) Which parameters are minimally ne eded for the development of a taxonomic dynamics leading to the type of distribution of language family sizes currently attested (as measured in the i number of languages per family), which appears to be a power-law? (2) How may such a model be coupled with one of the dynamics of speaker populations leading to the type of language size seen today, which appears to follow a log-normal distribution?
18 pages including 9 figures