Models of cultural evolution demonstrate that the link between individual biases and populationlevel phenomena can be obscured by the process of cultural transmission (Kirby, Dowman, & Griffiths, 2007). However, recent extensions to these models predict that linguistic diversity will not emerge and that learners should evolve to expect little linguistic variation in their input (Smith & Thompso...

For almost forty years quantitative methods have been applied to the analysis of dialect variation: these methods focused mostly on identifying the most important dialectal groups using an aggregate analysis of the linguistic data (Séguy 1973; Goebl 1984; Nerbonne et al. 1999). While viewing dialect differences at an aggregate level certainly gives a more comprehensive view than the analysis of...

Linguistic universals arise from the interaction between the processes of language learning and language use. A test case for the relationship between these factors is linguistic variation, which tends to be conditioned on linguistic or sociolinguistic criteria. How can we explain the scarcity of unpredictable variation in natural language, and to what extent is this property of language a stra...

Speaker's sex has emerged as one of the most important social factors in the quantitative study of phonological variation. However, sex does not have a uniform effect on variables or even on variables that represent sound change in progress. This is because sex is not directly related to linguistic behavior but reflects complex social practice. The correlations of sex with linguistic variables ...

The paper is focused on self-contained linguistic problems based on text corpora. We argue that corpus-based problems differ from traditional linguistic problems because they make it possible to represent language variation. Furthermore, they often require basic statistical thinking from the students. The practical value of using data obtained from text corpora for teaching linguistics through ...

Categories are not invariant. This paper attempts to explore the dynamic nature of semantic category, in particular, that of fashion language, based on the cognitive theory of Dawkins’ memetics, a new theory of cultural evolution. Semantic attributes of linguistic memes decrease or proliferate in replication and spreading, which involves a dynamic development of semantic category. More specific...

Abstract This paper measures the stability of cross-linguistic register variation. A is a variety language that associated with extra-linguistic context. The relationship between and its context functional: linguistic features make up are motivated by needs constraints communicative situation. view hypothesizes should be universal, so we expect stable defines sets which contains. In this paper,...

Patterns of accent placement show cross-linguistic variation. In this thesis I will present a formal account of this variation within an Optimality Theoretic (OT) framework. Following a suggestion in Schwarzschild (1999), I will propose that accent pattern is determined by a grammatical principle (roughly: stress the most embedded constituent) which in English, but not in Italian can be overrul...

Studies in linguistics define lexico-syntactic patterns to characterize the linguistic utterances that can be interpreted with semantic relations. Because patterns are assumed to reflect linguistic regularities that have a stable interpretation, several software implement such patterns to extract semantic relations from text. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of pattern occurrences in various c...

Although Africa is the origin of modern humans, the pattern and distribution of genetic variation and correlations with cultural and linguistic diversity in Africa have been understudied. Recent advances in genomic technology, however, have led to genomewide studies of African samples. In this article, we discuss genetic variation in African populations contextualized with what is known about a...