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Monte Carlo Simulation Of The Rise And The Fall Of Languages

Author

Listed:
  • CHRISTIAN SCHULZE

    (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Euroland)

  • DIETRICH STAUFFER

    (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Euroland)

Abstract

Similar to biological evolution and speciation, we define a language through a string of 8 or 16 bits. The parent gives its language to its children, apart from a random mutation from zero to one or from one to zero; initially all bits are zero. The Verhulst deaths are taken as proportional to the total number of people, while in addition languages spoken by many people are preferred over small languages. For a fixed population size, a sharp phase transition is observed: For low mutation rates, one language contains nearly all people; for high mutation rates, no language dominates and the size distribution of languages is roughly log-normal as for present human languages. A simple scaling law is valid.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Schulze & Dietrich Stauffer, 2005. "Monte Carlo Simulation Of The Rise And The Fall Of Languages," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(05), pages 781-787.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijmpcx:v:16:y:2005:i:05:n:s0129183105007479
    DOI: 10.1142/S0129183105007479
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Michael Boissonneault & Paul Vogt, 2021. "A systematic and interdisciplinary review of mathematical models of language competition," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Schulze, Christian & Stauffer, Dietrich, 2007. "Competition of languages in the presence of a barrier," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 379(2), pages 661-664.

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