Evolutionary dynamics of language: Insights from a diverse sample of sociolinguistic studies
John Mansfield
February 2025 

The evolutionary dynamics of language can be studied using phylogenetic modelling of changes over thousands of years, or by close observation of changes unfolding over a few decades at the community level. The phylogenetic approach uses data from hundreds of languages to make cross-linguistic generalisations, but when it comes to community-level studies, the sociolinguistic variationist method has until recently been hampered by very narrow language sampling. However this is now changing, with an increasing number of variationist studies published on diverse languages. In this paper I assemble a diverse sample of variationist studies encompassing 63 languages from 26 families, and review potential patterns regarding rates of change of linguistic features, and which features are associated with social categories or social identity signalling. These observations largely converge with results obtained from phylogenetic methods, suggesting that more systematic meta-analysis of diverse variationist studies will provide a new way to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of language.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008948 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	under review
keywords:	language change, diversification, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, morphology, syntax, phonology
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