SÃREN WICHMANN () (Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; Languages and Cultures of Indian America (TCIA), PO Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands) DIETRICH STAUFFER () (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Germany) CHRISTIAN SCHULZE (Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, USA) ERIC W. HOLMAN () (Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, USA)
Abstract
An earlier study [24] concluded, based on computer simulations and some inferences from empirical data, that languages will change the more slowly the larger the population gets. We replicate this study using a more complete language model for simulations (the Schulze model combined with a BarabásiâAlbert network) and a richer empirical dataset [12]. Our simulations show either a negligible or a strong dependence of language change on population sizes, depending on the parameter settings; while empirical data, like some of the simulations, show a negligible dependence.
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