Scaling in Biological and Social Networks - Abstract - Pellegrino
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Sound systems of the world's languages as complex systems
Work in progress with Christophe Coupé (CNRS, Université de Lyon, IXXI) and Egidio Marsico (CNRS, Université de Lyon, IXXI)
Regarding language(s) and linguistics, the science of complexity has mainly been applied in the field of socio-linguistics and evolutionary linguistics (e.g. multi-agent modeling of the emergence of linguistic convention, etc.) and in lexical semantics.
Our purpose is different since we aim at assessing whether it can also provide relevant methodologies to investigate the linguistic structure of the world's languages per se. We currently focus on two complementary issues regarding the sound systems in the world's languages:
1. Is it possible and relevant to consider these sound systems as complex systems? If yes, how do we identify the primitives and interactions at play in their structure and evolution?
2. Considering speech as a process of information transmission, is there any bandwidth limit visible among languages?
The first issue is addressed using graph theory and statistical modeling of interactions and results in a very preliminary model of evolution. Regarding the second issue, an Information Theory-based cross-language methodology reveals the existence of a trade-off in terms of interaction between the speech rate and the amount of information borne by each speech unit.
In this talk, I will give an overview of these studies and discuss the results so far.