Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Gong T
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3299756 | biostudies-literature | 2012
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Gong Tao T Shuai Lan L Tamariz Mónica M Jäger Gerhard G
PloS one 20120312 3
Language change takes place primarily via diffusion of linguistic variants in a population of individuals. Identifying selective pressures on this process is important not only to construe and predict changes, but also to inform theories of evolutionary dynamics of socio-cultural factors. In this paper, we advocate the Price equation from evolutionary biology and the Pólya-urn dynamics from contagion studies as efficient ways to discover selective pressures. Using the Price equation to process t ...[more]