Abstract

This paper describes the use of cellular automata to model dialect feature diffusion as the adaptive aspect of the complex system of speech. We show how a feature, once established, can spread across an area, and how the distribution of a dialect feature as it stands in Linguistic Atlas data could either spread or diminish. Throughout hundreds of iterations, we can watch regional and social distribution patterns emerge as a consequence of update rules. We validate patterns with respect to the linguistic distributions known to occur in the Linguistic Atlas Project.

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