Emergent behavior in phonological pattern change

  • Authors:
  • Mark Dras;K. David Harrison

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computing, Macquarie University, North Ryde 2109 Australia;Department of Linguistics, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA

  • Venue:
  • ICAL 2003 Proceedings of the eighth international conference on Artificial life
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Language change has recently come to be seen as a complex dynamical system, along the lines of evolutionary biology and economics, as opposed to previous conceptions as a linear or cyclical system. We model the change of a particular phenomenon, vowel harmony, and look at the conditions under which the trajectory of change matches theoretical and empirical predictions. Our experimental work shows that there are certain conditions under which the desired trajectories do not occur, implying that absence of these conditions is necessary for accurate modeling of language change.