Language Diversity across the Consonant Inventories: A Study in the Framework of Complex Networks

TL;DR

This study models the emergence of linguistic diversity in consonant inventories across major language families using a complex network growth model, revealing preferential attachment within families and potential links to language age.

Contribution

Introduces a simple complex network growth model with a single parameter to explain consonant inventory diversity and intra-family preferences in language evolution.

Findings

Languages within a family show stronger preferential attachment in consonant choice.

The model's parameter correlates with the age of language families.

Shared ancestry influences consonant inventory similarities.

Abstract

n this paper, we attempt to explain the emergence of the linguistic diversity that exists across the consonant inventories of some of the major language families of the world through a complex network based growth model. There is only a single parameter for this model that is meant to introduce a small amount of randomness in the otherwise preferential attachment based growth process. The experiments with this model parameter indicates that the choice of consonants among the languages within a family are far more preferential than it is across the families. The implications of this result are twofold -- (a) there is an innate preference of the speakers towards acquiring certain linguistic structures over others and (b) shared ancestry propels the stronger preferential connection between the languages within a family than across them. Furthermore, our observations indicate that this parameter might bear a correlation with the period of existence of the language families under investigation.