Chapter 2. Dynamic Models of Language Evolution: the Linguistic Perspective

This chapter gives an overview of language variation and how the dynamics of language are explored through formal models. It briefly outlines the dimensions over which language structures can vary, then looks at some of the very different ways in which language change has been investigated (sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, evolutionary linguistics). It describes how dynamic models of change have been successfully used in all of these fields, and how they have shed light on many aspects of language dynamics, from the properties of language change through phylogenetic analyses of language history to computational and experimental models of cultural evolution.