MODELO ESTOCÁSTICO PARA EVOLUÇÃO DA DIVERSIDADE LINGÜÍSTICA EM RELEVOS CORRELACIONADOS

AUTOR(ES)

Eduardo José de Souza Silva

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

The origins of the languages have been an issue of investigation and broad interest since ancient times, and recent advances in archeology, genetics and linguistics have been important to a better comprehension of the linguistic diversification. However, there is not a universal consensus concerning the evolution of this diversity. Some similarities among distinct groups of languages suggest that they must have a common ancestor. Here we study the evolution of the linguistic diversity by means of a spatial computer simulation which considers the underlying diffusion mechanisms that generate and sustain this diversity. The model is used to describe the occupation of a given area by populations speaking various languages. In the process of colonization of regions, language mutation or differentiation can take place, and so increase the linguistic diversity. In the model, regions of the lattice are characterized by the amount of resources available to populations which are going to colonize the region. To each language, we assign a fitness value f which is defined as the sum of the resources of the sites containing populations which speak that specific language. We study both the cases where the values of fitness are unbounded and bounded by a maximum value (saturation). We introduce a degree of correlation among the resources of the regions that can be occupied by the populations, in such way that we can vary the degree of heterogeneity of the landscape. Our model gives origin to scaling laws in close resemblance with the ones observed to the actual distribution of languages on Earth. An abrupt change of the qualitative scenario is only observed in the limit of very high correlation, where the increasing of the linguistic diversity on area is faster than for low correlated landscapes. In the case where the fitness of the languages are bounded we found that for low correlated landscapes, the dependence of diversity on area shows a scaling regime which is in good agreement with the actual distribution of languages on Earth.

ASSUNTO(S)

exatas e da terra languages biometria biometria competição línguas

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