Interrogating Computational Agent-Based Models of Diachronic Linguistic Change

Abstract

In this work, we explore different approaches to the agent based model of diachronic linguistic change; in particular, we explore the simulation of consonant chain shifts, taking the well­ studied example of Grimm’s Law observed in Germanic languages as our case study. We present a particularly novel combination of continuous­ space representation and agent-­based modeling, showing that vector representations can be used to model constraints on phonological change. We successfully produce the sound shifts observed in Grimm’s Law under both deterministic and stochastic modeling constraints, and observe dynamics that warrant further investigation, observing s­-curve dynamics similar to those observed by field linguists. In particular, we show that under our modeling constraints, the emergence of the full chain of Grimm’s laws’ shifts is subject to variation by model parameters, presenting a novel paradigm under which to investigate the emergence and propagation of sound shifts.