118 posts · 102,007 views
A blog (mostly) dedicated to language, its evolution and anything else in-between.
Wintz
27 posts
Sean Roberts
65 posts
Hannah Little
0 posts
Michael
10 posts
Richard Littauer
0 posts
Kevin
1 post
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- August 29, 2011
- 12:08 PM
- 1,068 views
A spin glass model of cultural consensus
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Does your social network determine your rational rationality? When trying to co-ordinate with a number of other people on a cultural feature, the locally rational thing to do is to go with the majority. However, in certain situations it might make sense to choose the minority feature. This means that learning multiple features might be rational in some situations, even if there is a pressure against redundancy. ... Read more »
ITOH, Y., & UEDA, S. (2004) The Ising model for changes in word ordering rules in natural languages. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 198(3-4), 333-339. DOI: 10.1016/j.physd.2004.09.006
STAUFFER, D., CASTELLO, X., EGUILUZ, V., & SANMIGUEL, M. (2007) Microscopic Abrams–Strogatz model of language competition. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 374(2), 835-842. DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.07.036
Castelló, X., Loureiro, L., Eguíluz , V. M., & San Miguel, M. (2007) The fate of bilingualism in a model of language competition. Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress, 83-94. info:/
- August 24, 2011
- 04:56 AM
- 885 views
Language Evolves in R, not Python: An appology
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
One of the risks of blogging is that you can fire off ideas into the public domain while you’re still excited about them and haven’t really tested them all that well. Last month I blogged about a random walk model of linguistic complexity. This week, I found out that it was flawed...... Read more »
Lupyan G, & Dale R. (2010) Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20098492
- August 6, 2011
- 06:42 AM
- 1,028 views
Cultural Evolution and the Impending Singularity: The Movie
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
A video of a talk I gave at the Santa Fe Institute, asking questions like "Has Biological Evolution come to an end?", "Is belief an emergent property?", "Will advanced computers use humans as batteries?" and "Will robots spend more time playing the violin than solving science?"... Read more »
Sperl, M., Chang, A., Weber, N., & Hübler, A. (1999) Hebbian learning in the agglomeration of conducting particles. Physical Review E, 59(3), 3165-3168. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.59.3165
Chater N, & Christiansen MH. (2010) Language acquisition meets language evolution. Cognitive science, 34(7), 1131-57. PMID: 21564247
Ay N, Flack J, & Krakauer DC. (2007) Robustness and complexity co-constructed in multimodal signalling networks. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 362(1479), 441-7. PMID: 17255020
Guttal V, & Couzin ID. (2010) Social interactions, information use, and the evolution of collective migration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(37), 16172-7. PMID: 20713700
- August 4, 2011
- 03:42 AM
- 1,017 views
The Bilingual paradox in Language Evolution: Top down versus bottom up approaches
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Children are adept at learning more than one language at a time and there are many bilingual societies in the world. However, pressures on memory and redundancy makes it unclear what the adaptive advantage of a cognitive capacity for learning multiple languages at an early stage of language evolution would be. How can we account for the evolution of this ability? Would an early population of language users most likely be monolingual or bilingual?... Read more »
David Burkett,, & Tom Griffiths. (2010) Iterated Learning of Multiple Languaged from Multiple Teachers. The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of EvoLang 2010. info:/
- August 1, 2011
- 11:17 AM
- 904 views
Sonority and Sex: Why smaller communities are louder
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Ember & Ember show that the degree of sonority in a language is related to the frequency of extramarital sex in its community. Could this be linked to why smaller communities have a smaller phoneme inventory?... Read more »
EMBER, C., & EMBER, M. (2007) Climate, Econiche, and Sexuality: Influences on Sonority in Language. American Anthropologist, 109(1), 180-185. DOI: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.1.180
MUNROE, R., & FOUGHT, J. (2007) Response to Ember and Ember's “Climate, Econiche, and Sexuality: Influences on Sonority in Language”. American Anthropologist, 109(4), 784-785. DOI: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.4.784
- July 21, 2011
- 10:17 AM
- 819 views
Linguistic diversity and traffic accidents
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Daniel Nettle's model of linguistic diversity which showed that linguistic variation tends to decline even with a small amount of migration between communities. I wondered if statistics about population movement would correlate with linguistic diversity. I found that number of traffic fatalities are a pretty good predictor. What's going on?... Read more »
Atkinson QD. (2011) Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6027), 346-9. PMID: 21493858
- June 26, 2011
- 04:50 PM
- 1,072 views
A random walk model of linguistic complexity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Large-scale statistical analyses of linguistic typologies (e.g. Lupyan & Dale, 2010) have poor temporal resolution. A correlation between two variables that exists now may be an accident of more complex dynamics. I discuss a random walk model that tries to estimate the probability that a current correlation is dynamically unstable.... Read more »
Lupyan G, & Dale R. (2010) Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20098492
Hay, J., & Bauer, L. (2007) Phoneme inventory size and population size. Language, 83(2), 388-400. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2007.0071
Atkinson QD. (2011) Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6027), 346-9. PMID: 21493858
- June 21, 2011
- 09:25 PM
- 953 views
Linguistic interactions in the UK
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Ratti et al. (2010) take data from 12 billion telephone calls made over the space of a month and estimate regions of human interaction. The map seems to correlate with regional accent.... Read more »
Ratti, Carlo, Sobolevsky, Stanislav, Calabrese, Francesco, Andris, Clio, Reades, Jonathan, Martino, Mauro, Claxton, Rob, & Strogatz, Steven H. (2010) Redrawing the map of Great Britain from a network of human interaction. PLoS ONE. info:/
- June 18, 2011
- 05:55 PM
- 1,056 views
Creative cultural transmission as chaotic sampling
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Chaos has been used to create variations on musical and dance sequences (Dabby, 2008; Bradley & Stuart, 1998). Here, I apply this to birdsong. It could also be used to model the evolution of creative cultural features.... Read more »
Dabby, D. (2008) MUSIC THEORY: Creating Musical Variation. Science, 320(5872), 62-63. DOI: 10.1126/science.1153825
Bradley E, & Stuart J. (1998) Using chaos to generate variations on movement sequences. Chaos (Woodbury, N.Y.), 8(4), 800-807. PMID: 12779786
Spencer, K., Wimpenny, J., Buchanan, K., Lovell, P., Goldsmith, A., & Catchpole, C. (2005) Developmental stress affects the attractiveness of male song and female choice in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 58(4), 423-428. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-005-0927-5
Soma, M., Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M., & Okanoya, K. (2009) Song-learning strategies in the Bengalese finch: do chicks choose tutors based on song complexity?. Animal Behaviour, 78(5), 1107-1113. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.08.002
Kiebel SJ, Daunizeau J, & Friston KJ. (2008) A hierarchy of time-scales and the brain. PLoS computational biology, 4(11). PMID: 19008936
Hosino, T., & Okanoya, K. (2000) Lesion of a higher-order song nucleus disrupts phrase level complexity in Bengalese finches. NeuroReport, 11(10), 2091-2095. DOI: 10.1097/00001756-200007140-00007
- June 15, 2011
- 12:15 AM
- 1,133 views
Cultural Evolution and the Impending Singularity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Prof. Alfred Hulber is an actual mad professor who is a danger to life as we know it. In a talk this evening he went from ball bearings in castor oil to hyper-advanced machine intelligence. However, will hyper-intelligent machines actually give us a better scientific understanding of the universe, or will they just spend their time playing tetris?... Read more »
Sperl, M., Chang, A., Weber, N., & Hübler, A. (1999) Hebbian learning in the agglomeration of conducting particles. Physical Review E, 59(3), 3165-3168. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.59.3165
Bettencourt LM, Lobo J, Helbing D, Kühnert C, & West GB. (2007) Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(17), 7301-6. PMID: 17438298
West, G. (1997) A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology. Science, 276(5309), 122-126. DOI: 10.1126/science.276.5309.122
Chater N, & Christiansen MH. (2010) Language acquisition meets language evolution. Cognitive science, 34(7), 1131-57. PMID: 21564247
- June 14, 2011
- 04:50 PM
- 887 views
Categorising languages through network modularity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Today I've been learning more about network structure (from Cris Moore) and I've applied my poor understanding and overconfidence to find language families from etymology data! The analysis suggests a split between Germanic and Romance languages.... Read more »
Aaron Clauset, Cristopher Moore, & M. E. J. Newman. (2008) Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks. Nature 453, 98 - 101 (2008). arXiv: 0811.0484v1
- June 14, 2011
- 12:15 AM
- 869 views
Academic Networking
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Who are the movers and shakers in your field? You can use social network theory on your bibliographies to find out ...... Read more »
SAID, Y., WEGMAN, E., SHARABATI, W., & RIGSBY, J. (2008) Social networks of author–coauthor relationships. Computational Statistics , 52(4), 2177-2184. DOI: 10.1016/j.csda.2007.07.021
Newman, M. (2001) From the Cover: The structure of scientific collaboration networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 404-409. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.021544898
- May 18, 2011
- 11:53 AM
- 399 views
The end of universals?
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
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Woah, I just read some of the responses to Dunn et al. (2011) “Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals” (language log here, Replicated Typo coverage here). It’s come in for a lot of flack. One concern raised at the LEC was that, considering an extreme interpretation, there may be no affect of . . . → Read More: The end of universals?... Read more »
Michael Dunn,, Simon J. Greenhill,, Stephen C. Levinson, & . (2011) Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 79-82. info:/
- May 6, 2011
- 04:38 AM
- 1,095 views
Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Japonic languages
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Lee & Hasagawa (2011) use phylogenetic methods to trace the origins of Japonic languages and dialects.... Read more »
Lee S, & Hasegawa T. (2011) Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society. PMID: 21543358
Gray, R., Drummond, A., & Greenhill, S. (2009) Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement. Science, 323(5913), 479-483. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166858
- April 19, 2011
- 08:41 AM
- 1,060 views
The Return of the Phoneme Inventories
by Wintz in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Right, I already referred to Atkinson’s paper in a previous post, and much of the work he’s presented is essentially part of a potential PhD project I’m hoping to do. Much of this stems back to last summer, where I mentioned how the phoneme inventory size correlates with certain demographic features, such as population size and population . . . → Read More: The Return of the Phoneme Inventories... Read more »
Atkinson QD. (2011) Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6027), 346-9. PMID: 21493858
- April 9, 2011
- 05:00 AM
- 605 views
How old am I?
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
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It’s my birthday! But how old am I? Well, that’s not such a straightforward question. Even a seemingly well-defined concept such as age can be affected by cultural factors
First, my age in years is a bit of an estimate of the actual amount of time I’ve been alive, due to leap-years etc. Second, a year is . . . → Read More: How old am I?... Read more »
Hill, M., Preston, S., Elo, I., & Rosenwaike, I. (1997) Age-Linked Institutions and Age Reporting among Older African Americans. Social Forces, 75(3), 1007. DOI: 10.2307/2580528
Hill, M., Preston, S., & Rosenwaike, I. (2000) Age Reporting among White Americans Aged 85 : Results of a Record Linkage Study. Demography, 37(2), 175. DOI: 10.2307/2648119
Knodel J, & Chayovan N. (1991) Age and birth date reporting in Thailand. Asian and Pacific population forum / East-West Population Institute, East-West Center, 5(2-3), 41. PMID: 12343437
- April 8, 2011
- 10:02 AM
- 1,210 views
Colour terms and national flags
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Today, I wondered whether the number of basic colour terms a language has is reflected in the number of colours on its country’s flag. The idea being that a country’s flag contains colours that are important to its society, and therefore a country with more social tools for discussing colour (colour words) will be more likely to put more colours on its flag. It was a long shot, but here’s what I found:... Read more »
Lupyan G, & Dale R. (2010) Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20098492
- March 18, 2011
- 12:52 PM
- 941 views
Cultural inheritance in studies of artifical grammar learning
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
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Recently, I’ve been attending an artificial language learning research group and have discovered an interesting case of cultural inheritance. Arthur Reber was one of the first researchers to look at the implicit learning of grammar. Way back in 1967, he studied how adults (quaintly called ‘Ss’ in the original paper) learned an artificial grammar, created from . . . → Read More: Cultural inheritance in studies of artifical grammar learning... Read more »
A. Reber. (1967) Implicit learning of artifical grammars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Behavior, 855-863. info:/
- March 18, 2011
- 08:27 AM
- 1,284 views
Emergence of linguistic diversity in the lab
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
I propose an experiment based on a theory from Nettle (1999) and an experimental paradigm by Roberts (2010) to look at the emergence of stable bilingualism.... Read more »
Roberts, G. (2010) An experimental study of social selection and frequency of interaction in linguistic diversity. Interaction Studies, 11(1), 138-159. DOI: 10.1075/is.11.1.06rob
- March 7, 2011
- 09:53 AM
- 957 views
Emergence of linguistic diversity in the lab
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
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There is a huge amount of linguistic diversity in the world. Isolation and drift due to cultural evolution can explain much of this, but there are many cases where linguistic diversity emerges and persists within groups of interacting individuals. Previous research has identified the use of linguistic cues of identity as an important factor in the . . . → Read More: Emergence of linguistic diversity in the lab... Read more »
Roberts, G. (2010) An experimental study of social selection and frequency of interaction in linguistic diversity. Interaction Studies, 11(1), 138-159. DOI: 10.1075/is.11.1.06rob
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