Re: Accelerated language evolution : a proposed experiment

I've had a similar idea before; this would certainly be interesting.
Indeed, I wonder whether it's feasible to do such an experiment online over
instant messaging.  This would have big implications for 'phonology': the
underlying production mechanism would be keyboard input instead of speech,
which would make the natural 'phonological systems' and 'sound changes'
drastically different than the familiar speech-based ones (there would
probably be significant interference from familiar orthographies, though).
But as far as morphology and syntax and lexicon, the experiment should be
relatively medium-independent.

I conjecture that, if all the participants are fluent speakers of the same
natlang (e.g. English, as you seem to assume), the language of the
experiment would probably quickly absorb features of that natlang,
especially given the imposed higher rate of change.  Of course, this would
allow an interesting variant on the experiment looking at how much
interference takes place and how quickly; but it strikes me that it would be
difficult to get a good simulation of language change independent of any
natlang if all the volunteers had a common language initially.

Alex

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:55:55 +0100, Peter Bleackley
<Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:

>I know that some people on the list are professional linguists, so I
>thought that they might be interested in the proposed methodology for
>studying the evolution of languages in real time. The idea is that language
>evolves due to the errors that speakers make during language acquisition.
>People normally spend quite a long time on language acquisition, in
>constant contact with fluent speakers, and so are able to correct most of
>these errors. If people have to learn a language in a limited time, with
>limited access to fluent speakers, the rate of change will be
>correspondingly higher.
>
>At the start of the experiment, a group of volunteers (Generation 0) is
>given information about a conlang, consisting of a core vocabulary (common
>to all volunteers), an extended vocabulary (50% of the remaining lexicon,
>selected at random, different for each volunteer), a basic grammar, and a
>set of example sentences based on the core vocabulary. Each volunteer is
>told that he is a field linguist, visiting the native speakers of the
>language, which at the end of two years he must document. The native
>speakers are monolingual.
>The volunteers meet in a room around 3 time a week for two hours at a time
>and try to communicate in the language. There are various props in the room
>that they can use to try to illustrate what they are saying.
>
>At the end of the first year, Generation 1 joins the experiment. They are
>also told that they are field linguists, and that their task is to learn
>the language from its native speakers and produce a report at the end of
>two years. They, however, are given no initial information about the
>language - they only have Generation 0 to learn it from, and both
>generations are under strict instructions to use no English and maintain
>the fiction that the native speakers are monolingual. At the end of each
>year N, a new Generation N of volunteers joins the experiment.
>
> From the end of year 2 onwards, Generation N-2 leaves the experiment and
>writes their field reports. This has the effect of removing the most fluent
>speakers from the pool, and thus ensuring that a number of the errors that
>the younger speakers have made become permanently incorporated into the
>language. The field reports are studied to see how the language has changed
>- what sound changes are occurring, what new grammatical features are
>emerging, what changes the lexicon is undergoing.
>
>Pete
>=========================================================================

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