With these statistical mechanics I language change and population genetics wed
With these statistical mechanics I language change and population genetics wed
- Event time: 1:00pm
- Event date: 7th March 2005
- Speaker: Professor Richard Blythe (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
In this talk I take a statistical physicist's eye view of language change that is based on some standard, and not-so-standard, ideas from the linguistics community. Through this approach, a model of interacting speakers is constructed, analysed and found to bear more than a passing similarity with a classic model of population genetics introduced in the 1930s by Fisher and Wright. With our interest in this model piqued, we have succeeded in obtaining new analytical results for this model which I will present, along with plans for further work.
About Condensed Matter lunchtime seminars
This is a weekly series of informal talks given primarily by members of the institute of condensed matter and complex systems, but is also open to members of other groups and external visitors. The aim of the series is to promote discussion and learning of various topics at a level suitable to the broad background of the group. Everyone is welcome to attend..