Language acquisition and implication for language change: A computational model.

Abstract

Computer modeling techniques, when applied to language acquisition problems, give an often unrealized insight into the diachronic change that occurs in language over successive generations. This paper shows that using assumptions about language acquisition to model successive generations of learners in a computer simulation, can have a drastic effect on the long term changes that occur in a language. More importantly, it shows that slight changes in the acquisition model can have drastic effects on language change.