Abstract
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be
described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's
variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog,
1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple
idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined
by the interaction between the biological constraints on human
grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment
during the course of language acquisition. Such interaction can
be formalized precisely and quantitatively in a mathematical model
of language learning. Consequently, we model language change as
the change in grammar distribution over time, which can be related
to the statistical properties of historical linguistic data. As an
empirical test, we apply the proposed model to explain the loss of
the verb-second phenomenon in Old French and Old English based on
corpus studies of historical texts.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Education,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
68 articles.
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