Constant Rate Effects and Beyond: Modelling Interactions of Language-Internal and Language-External Factors in Language Change
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Arts Languages and Cultures
Abstract
Language change is conditioned by a variety of factors, including grammar, the psychological facts of language learning, properties of speech production and perception, and the social embedding of linguistic communication. Although research in linguistics has produced a wealth of information about each of these factors separately, relatively little is known about their interactions. The reason for this is mainly methodological: studying the complex interactions of a number of factors requires adoption of a new kind of approach, in which languages and language communities are viewed as complex dynamical systems evolving through time in response to variation in a number of parameters.
The aim of my research is to elucidate the interactions of internal and external factors in language change. Even though internal factors such as the psychology of language learning and various speech processing effects may shape the direction of language change, a crucial role is played by factors which are strictly speaking external to language: these include the social evaluation of different linguistic variants and the shape and evolution of the social network at the heart of the organization of a speech community, for example. I tackle the problem of these interactions by modelling language use and language learning mathematically and with computer simulations, and by comparing the predictions of these models against empirical data. The different predictions made by different models shed light on the biological, psychological and social processes underlying linguistic variation and language change; in this way, complex-systems modelling contributes to the ongoing debate on how and why languages change.
The aim of my research is to elucidate the interactions of internal and external factors in language change. Even though internal factors such as the psychology of language learning and various speech processing effects may shape the direction of language change, a crucial role is played by factors which are strictly speaking external to language: these include the social evaluation of different linguistic variants and the shape and evolution of the social network at the heart of the organization of a speech community, for example. I tackle the problem of these interactions by modelling language use and language learning mathematically and with computer simulations, and by comparing the predictions of these models against empirical data. The different predictions made by different models shed light on the biological, psychological and social processes underlying linguistic variation and language change; in this way, complex-systems modelling contributes to the ongoing debate on how and why languages change.
Organisations
- University of Manchester (Collaboration, Fellow, Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Konstanz (Collaboration)
- Lancaster University (Collaboration)
- University of California, Davis (Collaboration)
- University of California, Merced (Collaboration)
- Indiana University Bloomington (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF YORK (Collaboration)
- Trinity College Dublin (Collaboration)
Publications
Kauhanen H
(2021)
Geospatial distributions reflect temperatures of linguistic features.
in Science advances
| Description | The key finding is that three decades of empirical work into the constancy of rates of change of language lacks the statistical power required to support its claims, but that progress can be made if an alternative model of language change is adopted. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 46 studies from the literature spanning the years 1989-2019 shows that the Constant Rate Hypothesis - the hypothesis that related linguistic changes progress at identical rates - is unsupported by the available evidence, contrary to what has previously been believed. This is shown by systematic a priori and post hoc power analyses of the standard technique of detecting Constant Rate Effects. An alternative, mechanistic model - one that derives the Constant Rate Effect as a mathematical theorem - has been put forward, together with an alternative statistical technique for evaluating the power of this new technique and the fit between model and data. Analysis of the alternative model shows that detection of Constant Rate Effects is possible given access to data of sufficient diachronic and synchronic resolution and given a suitable reinterpretation of the original hypothesis. The work conducted paves the way for a new kind of approach to the study of linguistic variation and change, where empirical patterns are deduced from mechanistic models and subjected to rigorous statistical tests through Monte Carlo techniques. One such technique, the Parametric Bootstrap Cross-fitting Method, has been implemented for the R statistical computing environment as part of this project. |
| Exploitation Route | It is hoped that the negative result discovered during this funding - that three decades of work into the Constant Rate Hypothesis have insufficient statistical power - will be taken seriously by the field, and that future work will make more extensive use of mathematical modelling and modern statistical techniques to avoid such issues. Part of the software developed during this fellowship has been made available to other researchers under an open-source license, and the remaining part will be prepared for similar open-source publication later this year. It would in principle be easy for others to apply these techniques to their data, or to extend the techniques and models themselves. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Other |
| Title | Methodology for detecting constant rates of change in language |
| Description | A new technique for deciding whether two changes in a language are proceeding at the same rate, taking into account the sample size and data resolution needed to pronounce this judgement in a statistically reliable manner. I am currently occupied with rolling out the model as a user-friendly package for the R statistical computing environment. The package will be released (open-source) to the community later in 2020. The simulation outputs have been deposited in a GitHub repository (https://github.com/hkauhanen/cre-power) as per the ESRC's Research Data Policy. |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | None known so far. |
| URL | https://github.com/hkauhanen/cre-power |
| Description | Collaboration with Prof George Walkden (University of Konstanz) |
| Organisation | University of Konstanz |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Writing of data analysis and simulation code, writing conference abstracts, preparing a poster and a talk, writing an article manuscript. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Prof Walkden: Contributions to the empirical database, discussions over statistical methods, providing feedback on article manuscript, co-delivering a poster and a talk. |
| Impact | A poster was presented at the 2019 International Conference on Computational Social Science (Amsterdam, July 17-20, 2019). A talk was given at the Symposium on Representations, Usage and Social Embedding in Language Change (Manchester, August 20-21, 2019). An article manuscript is currently under review with Language, a leading journal of general linguistics. The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, involving theoretical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational social science and computational statistical methods. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Constant Rate Effects in Manchester English |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Mathematical modelling of constant rate effects and estimation of the statistlcal power of conventional and new methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Manchester), Maciej Baranowski (Manchester), Danielle Turton (Lancaster), George Bailey (York): empirical and theoretical contributions on the on-going sound change of /t/-glottalization in Manchester English. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Constant Rate Effects in Manchester English |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Mathematical modelling of constant rate effects and estimation of the statistlcal power of conventional and new methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Manchester), Maciej Baranowski (Manchester), Danielle Turton (Lancaster), George Bailey (York): empirical and theoretical contributions on the on-going sound change of /t/-glottalization in Manchester English. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Constant Rate Effects in Manchester English |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Mathematical modelling of constant rate effects and estimation of the statistlcal power of conventional and new methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Manchester), Maciej Baranowski (Manchester), Danielle Turton (Lancaster), George Bailey (York): empirical and theoretical contributions on the on-going sound change of /t/-glottalization in Manchester English. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The 2019 CSSS Language Diffusion Collective |
| Organisation | Indiana University Bloomington |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is a group of early career researchers and postdoctoral students that met at the 2019 Complex Systems Summer School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. We are working on modelling the diffusion of human language across geographical space, taking into account both population-dynamic factors and internal linguistic factors. A poster presentation was accepted for the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020), though the conference has now been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. An article manuscript is under preparation. My role is to serve as project lead, to contribute to the theoretical framework and modelling, and to think of ways of testing the model empirically. |
| Collaborator Contribution | My collaborators (Ritwika VPS, Harun Siljak, Kenzie Givens and Pablo M. Flores) are contributing to the modelling and empirical aspects of the project. |
| Impact | A poster has been accepted to be delivered at the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020; cancelled now because of COVID-19). The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, covering aspects of historical linguistics, language dynamics, dynamical systems theory and models of diffusion phenomena. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The 2019 CSSS Language Diffusion Collective |
| Organisation | Trinity College Dublin |
| Country | Ireland |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is a group of early career researchers and postdoctoral students that met at the 2019 Complex Systems Summer School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. We are working on modelling the diffusion of human language across geographical space, taking into account both population-dynamic factors and internal linguistic factors. A poster presentation was accepted for the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020), though the conference has now been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. An article manuscript is under preparation. My role is to serve as project lead, to contribute to the theoretical framework and modelling, and to think of ways of testing the model empirically. |
| Collaborator Contribution | My collaborators (Ritwika VPS, Harun Siljak, Kenzie Givens and Pablo M. Flores) are contributing to the modelling and empirical aspects of the project. |
| Impact | A poster has been accepted to be delivered at the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020; cancelled now because of COVID-19). The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, covering aspects of historical linguistics, language dynamics, dynamical systems theory and models of diffusion phenomena. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The 2019 CSSS Language Diffusion Collective |
| Organisation | University of California, Davis |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is a group of early career researchers and postdoctoral students that met at the 2019 Complex Systems Summer School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. We are working on modelling the diffusion of human language across geographical space, taking into account both population-dynamic factors and internal linguistic factors. A poster presentation was accepted for the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020), though the conference has now been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. An article manuscript is under preparation. My role is to serve as project lead, to contribute to the theoretical framework and modelling, and to think of ways of testing the model empirically. |
| Collaborator Contribution | My collaborators (Ritwika VPS, Harun Siljak, Kenzie Givens and Pablo M. Flores) are contributing to the modelling and empirical aspects of the project. |
| Impact | A poster has been accepted to be delivered at the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020; cancelled now because of COVID-19). The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, covering aspects of historical linguistics, language dynamics, dynamical systems theory and models of diffusion phenomena. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | The 2019 CSSS Language Diffusion Collective |
| Organisation | University of California, Merced |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This is a group of early career researchers and postdoctoral students that met at the 2019 Complex Systems Summer School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. We are working on modelling the diffusion of human language across geographical space, taking into account both population-dynamic factors and internal linguistic factors. A poster presentation was accepted for the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020), though the conference has now been cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. An article manuscript is under preparation. My role is to serve as project lead, to contribute to the theoretical framework and modelling, and to think of ways of testing the model empirically. |
| Collaborator Contribution | My collaborators (Ritwika VPS, Harun Siljak, Kenzie Givens and Pablo M. Flores) are contributing to the modelling and empirical aspects of the project. |
| Impact | A poster has been accepted to be delivered at the 13th EvoLang conference (Brussels, 14-17 April 2020; cancelled now because of COVID-19). The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, covering aspects of historical linguistics, language dynamics, dynamical systems theory and models of diffusion phenomena. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Title | R package 'pbcm' |
| Description | An implementation of the Parametric Bootstrap Cross-fitting Method (PBCM) for the R statistical computing environment. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | One paper so far associated with the present grant. |
| URL | https://github.com/hkauhanen/pbcm |
| Description | Oral presentation at the RUSE symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Oral presentation at international conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://henr.in/talks/RUSE2019/ |
| Description | Poster presentation at the 5th International Conference on Computational Social Science |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation at international conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://henr.in/talks/ICCSS2019/ |
| Description | Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Participated in the 2019 edition of the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. This was a month-long intensive course on complex systems science, drawing 80 participants (early career researchers and postgraduate students) from different disciplines and different parts of the world. The summer school included lectures, tutorials and group work, and culminated in the carrying out and presentation of small research projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://wiki.santafe.edu/index.php/Complex_Systems_Summer_School_2019_(CSSS) |
| Description | Symposium on Representations, Usage and Social Embedding in Language Change (RUSE) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I organized a workshop attended by around 50 researchers and postgraduate students and devoted to studying the interactions between representation, usage and social embedding in linguistic variation and change. The event consisted of two days of talks, including three keynote talks. An open debate about future prospects concluded the workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://rusesymposium.org.uk/ |