Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:27:54.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Computer Simulation of Dialect Feature Diffusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

William A. Kretzschmar Jr. ,
Ilkka Juuso  and
C. Thomas Bailey
William A. Kretzschmar Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia and University of Oulu
Ilkka Juuso
Affiliation:
University of Oulu
C. Thomas Bailey
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
*
*Address for correspondence: Bill Kretzschmar, Dept of English, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. 706-542-2246 Email kretzsch@uga.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper describes the independent construction and implementation of two cellular automata that model dialect feature diffusion as the adaptive aspect of the complex system of speech. We show how a feature, once established, can spread across an area, and how the distribution of a dialect feature as it stands in Linguistic Atlas data could either spread or diminish. Cellular automata use update rules to determine the status of a feature at a given location with respect to the status of its neighboring locations. In each iteration all locations in a matrix are evaluated, and then the new status for each one is displayed all at once. Throughout hundreds of iterations, we can watch regional distributional patterns emerge as a consequence of these simple update rules. We validate patterns with respect to the linguistic distributions known to occur in the Linguistic Atlas Project.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistic Geography , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 41 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, Danial M. & Strogatz, Steven H.. 2003. Linguistics: Modelling the dynamics of language death. Nature 424(6951). 900.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alonso-Sanz, Ramon & Margarita, Martin. 2003. Elementary cellular automata with memory. Complex Systems 14. 99–126.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Robert. 2006. The Evolution of cooperation, rev. edn. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Britain, David. 2002. Space and spatial diffusion. In J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 603–637. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Burkette, Allison. 2001. The story of chester drawers. American Speech 76. 139–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkette, Allison. 2009. The lion, the witch, and the armoire: Lexical variation in case furniture terms. American Speech 84. 315–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, M. R., Rajewsky, N. & Speer, E. R.. 1999. Exact solution of a cellular automaton for traffic. Journal of Statistical Physics 95(1-2). 45–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, Martin. 1970. Mathematical games: The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game “Life.” Scientific American 223. 120–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Nigel. 2008. Agent-based models. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Nigel & Troitzsch, Klaus. 2005. Simulation for the social scientist. Maidenhead: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Gosper Glider Gun. YouTube video by nbidyanta. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvUiA-Q-3hM Google Scholar
Grieve, Jack, Speelman, Dirk & Geeraerts, Dirk. 2010. The emergence of regional linguistic variation: A computer simulation. Presented at NWAV 39, San Antonio, TX.Google Scholar
Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1991. Principles of historical linguistics, 2nd edn. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, John. 1998. Emergence: From chaos to order. New York: Basic Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauffman, Stuart. 1995. At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization and complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Rudi. 1994. In Brigitte Nerlich (trans.) On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2002a. Koineization and accommodation. In J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 603–637. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2002b. Models of linguistic change and diffusion: New evidence from dialect leveling in British English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 6. 187–216.Google Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr. 1992. Isoglosses and predictive modeling. American Speech 67. 227–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr. 2009. The Linguistics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr. 2010. Language variation and complex systems. American Speech 85. 263–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kretzschmar, William A. Jr., Kretzschmar, Brendan & Brockman, Irene. 2013. Scaled measurement of geographic and social speech data. Literary and Linguistic Computing 28. 173–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1981. Resolving the Neogrammarian controversy. Language 57. 267–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1992. Evidence for regular sound change in English dialect geography. In Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen, & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics, 42–71. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors (Language in Society 20). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. 2011. Review of Kretzschmar 2009. English World-Wide 32. 237–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, John & Page, Scott. 2007. Complex adaptive systems: An introduction to computational models of social life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Melanie. 2009. Complexity: A guided tour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Melanie, Crutchfield, James & Das, Rasarthwe. 1996. Evolving cellular automata with genetic algorithms: A review of recent work. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Its Applications, 42–55. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Nerbonne, John. 2010. Measuring the diffusion of linguistic change. In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365. 3821–3828. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0048. Viewed online at http://urd.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/papers/diffusion-jn-2008.pdf CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Palash. 2000. A Brief history of cellular automata. ACM Computing Surveys 32. 80–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1978. Micromotives and macrobehavior. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Johannes. 1872. Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Tomassini, Marco, Sipper, Moshe & Perrenoud, Mathieu. 2000. On the generation of high-quality random numbers by two-dimensional cellular automata. IEEE Transactions on Computers 49(10). 1146–1151.Google Scholar
Topa, Paweł. 2006. A Cellular automata approach for modelling complex river systems. In Samira El Yacoubi, Bastien Chopard & Stafania Bandini (eds.), Cellular Automata: 7th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, ACRI 2006 Perpignan, France, September 20-23, 2006 proceedings, 482–491. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torrens, Paul M. & Benenson, Itzhak. 2005. Geographic automata systems. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 19(4). 385–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 2. 215–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1983. Linguistic change and diffusion. In Peter Trudgill (ed.), On dialect, 52–87. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Von Neumann, John & Burks, Arthur W.. 1966. Theory of self-reproducing automata. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Stephen. 2002. A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media.Google Scholar
Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1992. The Cultural geography of the United States, rev. edn. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kretzschmar supplementary material 1

Kretzschmar supplementary material 1

Download Kretzschmar supplementary material 1(File)
File 2.8 MB
Supplementary material: File

Kretzschmar supplementary material 2

Kretzschmar supplementary material 2

Download Kretzschmar supplementary material 2(File)
File 4.3 MB
Supplementary material: File

Kretzschmar supplementary material 3

Kretzschmar supplementary material 3

Download Kretzschmar supplementary material 3(File)
File 4.3 MB