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SUMMARY:Languages adapt to minute differences in their speakers’ ecology
  - Freek Van de Velde (University of Leuven)
DTSTART:20180118T160000Z
DTEND:20180118T173000Z
UID:TALK98845@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:66226
DESCRIPTION:In evolutionary linguistics (Steels 2011)\, languages are cons
 idered as complex systems adapting to the niche occupied by the speech com
 munity (Kusters 2003 Christiansen & Chater 2008\; Bentz & Christiansen 201
 3). This adaptationist view assumes the existence of selection pressures a
 nd fitness on the part of languages. What exactly is this fitness? The obv
 ious candidate is ‘learnability’\, which can differ according to the e
 cology of the speech community. What is optimally learnable for young L1 s
 peakers differs from what is optimally learnable for adult L2 speakers. In
  this talk\, I will look at how grammar responds to changes in the populat
 ion structure\, shifting the ecological niche. Rather than focussing on la
 rge cross-linguistic differences mainly on synchronic data as done in Lupy
 an & Dale (2010) and Bentz & Winter (2013)\, I will look into diachronic c
 hanges within one subfamily\, namely West-Germanic. Combining traditional 
 linguistic methods with agent-based simulation\, it can be shown that lang
 uages are highly responsive to population change. This suggests that exter
 nally-driven language change does not need sudden demographic upheaval wit
 h a concomitant large-scale break in the transmission.\n\nBentz\, C. & M.H
 . Christiansen. 2013. ‘Linguistic adaptation: the trade-off between case
  marking and fixed word orders in Germanic and Romance languages’. In: F
 . Shi & G. Peng (eds.)\, Eastward flows the great river. Festschrift in ho
 nor of Prof. William S-Y. Wang on his 80th birthday. Hong Kong: City Unive
 rsity of Hong Kong Press. 48-56.\n\nBentz\, C. & B. Winter. 2013. ‘Langu
 ages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case’. Lang
 uage Dynamics and Change 3: 1-27.\n\nChristiansen\, M.H. & N. Chater. 2008
 . 'Language as shaped by the brain'. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31(5): 
 489-509.\n\nKusters\, W. 2003. Linguistic complexity: the influence of soc
 ial change on verbal inflection. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series.\n\nLupy
 an\, G. & R. Dale. 2010. ‘Language structure is partly determined by soc
 ial structure’. PLoS ONE 5(1).\n\nSteels\, L. 2011. ‘Modeling the cult
 ural evolution of language’. Physics of Life Review 8: 339-356.
LOCATION:English Faculty Lecture Room GR-06/07\, 9 West Road\, Sidgwick Si
 te.
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