Language extinction and linguistic fronts

Neus Isern,Joaquim Fort

doi:10.1098/rsif.2014.0028

Abstract

Language diversity has become greatly endangered in the past centuries owing to processes of language shift from indigenous languages to other languages that are seen as socially and economically more advantageous, resulting in the death or doom of minority languages. In this paper, we define a new language competition model that can describe the historical decline of minority languages in competition with more advantageous languages. We then implement this non-spatial model as an interaction term in a reaction–diffusion system to model the evolution of the two competing languages. We use the results to estimate the speed at which the more advantageous language spreads geographically, resulting in the shrinkage of the area of dominance of the minority language. We compare the results from our model with the observed retreat in the area of influence of the Welsh language in the UK, obtaining a good agreement between the model and the observed data.

Highlights

Mathematical and computational models are currently applied to many crossdisciplinary studies in areas such as ecology [1,2,3], archaeology [4 –6] or linguistics
Language death usually involves language shift to a new dominant language [12], and the language eventually dies with its last speaker [14]
We introduce a reaction–diffusion system to describe the spatial evolution of both competing languages, including an interaction term to describe the language shift dynamics

Summary

Introduction

Mathematical and computational models are currently applied to many crossdisciplinary studies in areas such as ecology [1,2,3], archaeology [4 –6] or linguistics. Studies have been undertaken to model the internal evolution of languages [7,8] as well as the geographical processes of language competition and replacement [9,10]. Language evolution takes place at a rather slow rate, with a timescale of about a thousand years for a single language to evolve into several different languages [11]. Language death is a process that takes place at substantially faster rates [12]. Language death usually involves language shift to a new dominant language [12] (either imposed [11] or acquired from neighbouring contact [13]), and the language eventually dies with its last speaker [14]

Methods

Results

Conclusion