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Explore the fascinating parallels between language change and biological evolution in this 1-hour 13-minute lecture by Charles Yang from the University of Pennsylvania. Delve into the development of mathematical models for language change, drawing insights from population genetics and modern linguistic theories. Discover how the dynamics of language learning over generations resemble the process of Natural Selection, allowing for quantitative measurements of grammatical hypotheses' "fitness" and predictions of language change directionality. Examine two specific case studies: the word order shift from Old French to Modern French and the cot-caught merger at the Massachusetts and Rhode Island border. Learn how the outcomes of these changes can be predicted from the statistical composition of linguistic data in the environment. Gain insights into the speaker's background in linguistics and computer science, and his work on language learning, language change, and computational linguistics.
