133 citations · 344 across the 15 of their papers we have counts for
15 papers
Reliable Detection and Quantification of Selective Forces in Language Change
Juan Guerrero Montero, Andres Karjus, Kenny Smith +1
Language change is a cultural evolutionary process in which variants of linguistic variables change in frequency through processes analogous to mutation, selection and genetic drif…
How individuals change language
Richard A Blythe, William Croft
Languages emerge and change over time at the population level though interactions between individual speakers. It is, however, hard to directly observe how a single speaker's lingu…
Conceptual similarity and communicative need shape colexification: an experimental study
Andres Karjus, Richard A. Blythe, Simon Kirby +2
Colexification refers to the phenomenon of multiple meanings sharing one word in a language. Cross-linguistic lexification patterns have been shown to be largely predictable, as si…
Communicative need modulates competition in language change
Andres Karjus, Richard A. Blythe, Simon Kirby +1
All living languages change over time. The causes for this are many, one being the emergence and borrowing of new linguistic elements. Competition between the new elements and olde…
Coupled differentiation and division of embryonic stem cells inferred from clonal snapshots
Liam J. Ruske, Jochen Kursawe, Anestis Tsakiridis +4
The deluge of single-cell data obtained by sequencing, imaging and epigenetic markers has led to an increasingly detailed description of cell state. However, it remains challenging…
Cross-situational learning of large lexicons with finite memory
James Holehouse, Richard A. Blythe
Cross-situational word learning, wherein a learner combines information about possible meanings of a word across multiple exposures, has previously been shown to be a very powerful…
Quantifying the dynamics of topical fluctuations in language
Andres Karjus, Richard A. Blythe, Simon Kirby +1
The availability of large diachronic corpora has provided the impetus for a growing body of quantitative research on language evolution and meaning change. The central quantities i…
Symmetry and Universality in Language Change
Richard A Blythe
We investigate mechanisms for language change within a framework where an unconventional signal for a meaning is first innovated, and then subsequently propagated through a speech…
Hierarchy of Scales in Language Dynamics
Richard A. Blythe
Methods and insights from statistical physics are finding an increasing variety of applications where one seeks to understand the emergent properties of a complex interacting syste…
Word learning under infinite uncertainty
Richard A. Blythe, Andrew D. M. Smith, Kenny Smith
Language learners must learn the meanings of many thousands of words, despite those words occurring in complex environments in which infinitely many meanings might be inferred by t…
Why is combinatorial communication rare in the natural world, and why is language an exception to this trend?
Thomas C. Scott-Phillips, Richard A. Blythe
In a combinatorial communication system, some signals consist of the combinations of other signals. Such systems are more efficient than equivalent, non-combinatorial systems, yet…
Stochastic dynamics of lexicon learning in an uncertain and nonuniform world
Rainer Reisenauer, Kenny Smith, Richard A. Blythe
We study the time taken by a language learner to correctly identify the meaning of all words in a lexicon under conditions where many plausible meanings can be inferred whenever a…
Fast fixation without fast networks
G. J. Baxter, R. A. Blythe, A. J. McKane
We investigate the dynamics of a broad class of stochastic copying processes on a network that includes examples from population genetics (spatially-structured Wright-Fisher models…
Neutral evolution: A null model for language dynamics
R. A. Blythe
We review the task of aligning simple models for language dynamics with relevant empirical data, motivated by the fact that this is rarely attempted in practice despite an abundanc…
Utterance Selection Model of Language Change
G. J. Baxter, R. A. Blythe, W. Croft +1
We present a mathematical formulation of a theory of language change. The theory is evolutionary in nature and has close analogies with theories of population genetics. The mathema…