摘要
Simulations mostly by physicists of the competition between adult languagessince 2003 are reviewed. The Viviane and Schulze models give good and reasonableagreement, respectively, with the empirical histogram of language sizes. Alsothe numbers of different languages within one language family is modeled reasonablyin an intermediate range. Bilingualism is now incorporated into the Schulze model.Also the rate at which the majority shifts from one language to another is found tobe nearly independent of the population size, or to depend strongly on it, accordingto details of the Schulze model. Other simulations, like Nettle-Culicover-Nowak, arereviewed more briefly.
基金
Improved family statistics were obtained for the Viviane model by P.M.C.de Oliveira,D.Stauffer,S.Wichmann,S.Moss de Oliveira,submitted,e-print 0709.0868 on arXiv.org,and for the Tuncay model by C.Tuncay,submitted to Int.J.Mod.Phys.C 19 in press(2008).Endangered languages were modelled by J.W.Minett,W.S.Y.Wang,Lingua,in press(2007).
