Modeling language evolution and feature dynamics in a realistic geographic environment

Rhea Kapur, Phillip Rogers

Abstract
Recent, innovative efforts to understand the uneven distribution of languages and linguistic feature values in time and space attest to both the challenge these issues pose and the value in solving them. In this paper, we introduce a model for simulating languages and their features over time in a realistic geographic environment. At its core is a model of language phylogeny and migration whose parameters are chosen to reproduce known language family sizes and geographic dispersions. This foundation in turn is used to explore the dynamics of linguistic features. Languages are assigned feature values that can change randomly or under the influence of nearby languages according to predetermined probabilities. We assess the effects of these settings on resulting geographic and genealogical patterns using homogeneity measures defined in the literature. The resulting model is both flexible and realistic, and it can be employed to answer a wide range of related questions.
Anthology ID:
2020.coling-main.68
Volume:
Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
December
Year:
2020
Address:
Barcelona, Spain (Online)
Editors:
Donia Scott, Nuria Bel, Chengqing Zong
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
International Committee on Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
788–798
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2020.coling-main.68
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2020.coling-main.68
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Rhea Kapur and Phillip Rogers. 2020. Modeling language evolution and feature dynamics in a realistic geographic environment. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 788–798, Barcelona, Spain (Online). International Committee on Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Modeling language evolution and feature dynamics in a realistic geographic environment (Kapur & Rogers, COLING 2020)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-4/2020.coling-main.68.pdf
Code
 rkapur102/language_phylogeny_feature_simulations
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