Reliable Detection and Quantification of Selective Forces in Language Change
This work provides a quantitative method for linguists to test hypotheses about language change mechanisms, though it is incremental as it builds on existing methods.
The researchers tackled the problem of quantifying selective forces in language change by applying a recently-introduced method to historical corpus data, demonstrating its reliability in analyzing English irregular verbs and detecting selection strength changes in Spanish spelling reforms.
Language change is a cultural evolutionary process in which variants of linguistic variables change in frequency through processes analogous to mutation, selection and genetic drift. In this work, we apply a recently-introduced method to corpus data to quantify the strength of selection in specific instances of historical language change. We first demonstrate, in the context of English irregular verbs, that this method is more reliable and interpretable than similar methods that have previously been applied. We further extend this study to demonstrate that a bias towards phonological simplicity overrides that favouring grammatical simplicity when these are in conflict. Finally, with reference to Spanish spelling reforms, we show that the method can also detect points in time at which selection strengths change, a feature that is generically expected for socially-motivated language change. Together, these results indicate how hypotheses for mechanisms of language change can be tested quantitatively using historical corpus data.