Bifurcation analysis of the fully symmetric language dynamical equation.
In this paper, I study a continuous dynamical system that describes language acquisition and communication in a group of individuals. Children inherit from their parents a mechanism to learn their language. This mechanism is constrained by a universal grammar which specifies a restricted set of candidate languages. Language acquisition is not error-free. Children may or may not succeed in acquiring exactly the language of their parents. Individuals talk to each other, and successful communication contributes to biological (or cultural) fitness. I provide a full bifurcation analysis of the case where the parameters are chosen to yield a highly symmetric dynamical system. Populations approach either an incoherent steady state, where many different candidate languages are represented in the population, or a coherent steady state, where the majority of the population speaks a single language. The main result of the paper is a description of how learning reliability affects the stability of these two kinds of equilibria. I rigorously find all fixed points, determine their stabilities, and prove that all populations tend to some fixed point. I also demonstrate that the fixed point representing an incoherent steady state becomes unstable in an S (n)-symmetric transcritical bifurcation as learning becomes more reliable.
Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Fine Hall, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08544-1000, USA. wmitchen@princeton.edu
W Garrett
WG
Mitchener
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008954:Models, Biological; D019303:Multilingualism; D010290:Parents; D011157:Population Dynamics