2010/04/21 by Ricard V. Solé, Solé, Ricard V., Bernat Corominas-Murtra +4
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Biological sciences #Language and cultural evolution #Origins and Evolution of Life #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1004.4528
17 Pages. A review on current models from statistical Physics and Theoretical Ecology applied to study language dynamics
arxiv created 2010/04/21 · openalex publication_date 2010/04/21 · arxiv updated 2010/04/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
As early indicated by Charles Darwin, languages behave and change very much like living species. They display high diversity, differentiate in space and time, emerge and disappear. A large body of literature has explored the role of information exchanges and communicative constraints in groups of agents under selective scenarios. These models have been very helpful in providing a rationale on how complex forms of communication emerge under evolutionary pressures. However, other patterns of large-scale organization can be described using mathematical methods ignoring communicative traits. These approaches consider shorter time scales and have been developed by exploiting both theoretical ecology and statistical physics methods. The models are reviewed here and include extinction, invasion, origination, spatial organization, coexistence and diversity as key concepts and are very simple in their defining rules. Such simplicity is used in order to catch the most fundamental laws of organization and those universal ingredients responsible for qualitative traits. The similarities between observed and predicted patterns indicate that an ecological theory of language is emerging, supporting (on a quantitative basis) its ecological nature, although key differences are also present. Here we critically review some recent advances lying and outline their implications and limitations as well as open problems for future research.