Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Anna Jon-And (Stockholm University)

Topic: Modeling the role of acquisition in contact-induced language change

Abstract: Accelerated language change in contact settings, especially language shift, has commonly been attributed to innovations during the second language acquisition process. Negative correlations have also been attested between proportions of non-native speakers and morphosyntactic complexity in cross-linguistic data. At the same time, cultural evolution experiments and computational models have revealed learnability as a general constraint in language evolution, suggesting that more learnable features, such as morphological simplicity, would be favored by all language acquisition and not only by second language acquisition. Here, I use agent-based computational simulations in order to test if diffusion of linguistic innovation in a language shift setting may result from a general acquisition effect reinforced by large proportions of learners, or if special weight needs to be attributed to second language acquisition. The simulations are informed by chronological demographic and linguistic data from the ongoing language shift from Bantu languages to Portuguese in Maputo, Mozambique. Parameters are set to proportions of native and non-native speakers over time and the model’s predictions are compared to variation in verbal morphology and use of locative prepositions in Portuguese.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Jon Carr

Centre for Language Evolution