A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.

Natural languages with their speech communities tend to compete for speakers, very much like firms compete for market shares. As a result, some languages suffer a shifting pressure which might lead them to their extinction. This work studies the dynamics of language shift in the context of modern bi...

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Autores principales:	José Ramón Uriarte, Stefan Sperlich
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/66d70d45d783497a9b20e8132f0934b8
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:66d70d45d783497a9b20e8132f0934b8
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:66d70d45d783497a9b20e8132f0934b82021-12-02T20:07:18ZA behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0252453https://doaj.org/article/66d70d45d783497a9b20e8132f0934b82021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252453https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Natural languages with their speech communities tend to compete for speakers, very much like firms compete for market shares. As a result, some languages suffer a shifting pressure which might lead them to their extinction. This work studies the dynamics of language shift in the context of modern bilingual societies like the Basque Country, Ireland and Wales. They all have two official languages, linguistically distant: A, spoken by all, and B, spoken by a bilingual minority. They also have a bilingual education system that ensures a steady flow of new bilinguals. However, a decay in the use of B is observed, signalling that shift processes are at work. To investigate this apparent paradox, we use a novel approach in the literature of language competition. We build a behavioural game model with which bilinguals choose either language A or B for each interaction. Thus, they play repeatedly the game. We present a theorem predicting that under reasonable assumptions, any given population of bilinguals will converge into a linguistic convention, namely into an evolutionary stable equilibrium of the game, that always embeds a proportion of bilinguals shifting to A. We validate this result by means of an empirical version of the model, showing that the predictions fit well the observed data of street use of Basque and daily use of Irish and Welsh.José Ramón UriarteStefan SperlichPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 6, p e0252453 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q José Ramón Uriarte Stefan Sperlich A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
description	Natural languages with their speech communities tend to compete for speakers, very much like firms compete for market shares. As a result, some languages suffer a shifting pressure which might lead them to their extinction. This work studies the dynamics of language shift in the context of modern bilingual societies like the Basque Country, Ireland and Wales. They all have two official languages, linguistically distant: A, spoken by all, and B, spoken by a bilingual minority. They also have a bilingual education system that ensures a steady flow of new bilinguals. However, a decay in the use of B is observed, signalling that shift processes are at work. To investigate this apparent paradox, we use a novel approach in the literature of language competition. We build a behavioural game model with which bilinguals choose either language A or B for each interaction. Thus, they play repeatedly the game. We present a theorem predicting that under reasonable assumptions, any given population of bilinguals will converge into a linguistic convention, namely into an evolutionary stable equilibrium of the game, that always embeds a proportion of bilinguals shifting to A. We validate this result by means of an empirical version of the model, showing that the predictions fit well the observed data of street use of Basque and daily use of Irish and Welsh.
format	article
author	José Ramón Uriarte Stefan Sperlich
author_facet	José Ramón Uriarte Stefan Sperlich
author_sort	José Ramón Uriarte
title	A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
title_short	A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
title_full	A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
title_fullStr	A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
title_full_unstemmed	A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.
title_sort	behavioural model of minority language shift: theory and empirical evidence.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/66d70d45d783497a9b20e8132f0934b8
work_keys_str_mv	AT joseramonuriarte abehaviouralmodelofminoritylanguageshifttheoryandempiricalevidence AT stefansperlich abehaviouralmodelofminoritylanguageshifttheoryandempiricalevidence AT joseramonuriarte behaviouralmodelofminoritylanguageshifttheoryandempiricalevidence AT stefansperlich behaviouralmodelofminoritylanguageshifttheoryandempiricalevidence
_version_	1718375306849419264

A behavioural model of minority language shift: Theory and empirical evidence.

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