RT Book,_Section
T1 Modeling the life and death of competing languages from a physical and mathematical perspective
A1 Seoane, Luis F.
A1 Mira Pérez, Jorge
AB Recent contributions address the problem of language coexistence as that of two species competingto aggregate speakers, thus focusing on the dynamics of linguistic traits across populations.They draw inspiration from physics and biology and share some underlying ideas - e. g. the searchfor minimal schemes to explain complex situations or the notion that languages are extant entitiesin a societal context and, accordingly, that objective, mathematical laws emerge driving theaforementioned dynamics. Di erent proposals pay attention to distinct aspects of such systems:Some of them emphasize the distribution of the population in geographical space, others researchexhaustively the role of bilinguals in idealized situations (e. g. isolated populations), and yetothers rely extremely on equations taken unchanged from physics or biology and whose parametersbear actual geometrical meaning. Despite the sources of these models - so unrelated to linguistics- sound results begin to surface that establish conditions and make testable predictions regardinglanguage survival within populations of speakers, with a decisive role reserved to bilingualism. Herewe review the most recent works and their interesting outcomes stressing their physical theoreticalbasis, and discuss the relevance and meaning of the abstract mathematical  ndings for real-lifesituations
PB Cambridge Scholars Publishing
SN 978-1-4438-1943-5
YR 2017
FD 2017
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/18430
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/18430
LA eng
NO Seoane LF and Mira J. Modeling the life and death of competing languages from a physical and mathematical perspective. In Bilingualism and Minority Languages in Europe: Current trends and developments (F. Lauchlan, M. C. Para ta Couto, eds.), pp.70-93 (ISBN: 978-1-4438-1943-5). Cambridge Scholars Press (2017).
DS Minerva
RD 29 abr 2026