tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post9184149982221104990..comments2024-03-28T07:34:49.133+01:00Comments on The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks: An early tree of languagesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-48454360734458682992012-11-14T04:24:30.943+01:002012-11-14T04:24:30.943+01:00Thanks for the references at the end. Network-thin...Thanks for the references at the end. Network-thinking in linguistics is going to become more prominent simply because language contact without language death is now the norm rather than the exception. (In my opinion, it's never been a total exception.) <br /><br /><a href="http://dmabrams.esam.northwestern.edu/pubs/Abrams%20and%20Strogatz%20-%20Modelling%20the%20dynamics%20of%20language%20death%20-%20Nature%202003.pdf" rel="nofollow">This mathematical model of language death</a> shows the standard thinking: when linguistic populations come into contact, one eradicates the other (through cultural assimilation), or both exist separately (through cultural separation, e.g., the Basques in Spain). So, the assumption is that linguistic contact never produces offspring and you thus don't need to worry about modeling a phylogeny full of nodes that have two parents. This assumption is obviously false in some cases, especially phonologically and lexically. Most Romance languages had some input from barbaric languages; similarly, when all those Global Englishes evolve into something new, it will be absurd to model them as direct offspring of English, as though they had no relationship to, say, Hindi or whatever. Seth Longhttp://www.technaverbascripta.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com