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Abstract

I discuss the ubiquity of power law distributions in language organisation (and elsewhere), and argue against Miller's (The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, William Heinemann, London, 2000) argument that large vocabulary size is a consequence of sexual selection. Instead I argue that power law distributions are evidence that languages are best modelled as dynamical systems but raise some issues for models of iterated language learning.

@article{briscoe08MindSociety,
  author={E. J. Briscoe},
  title={Language learning, power laws, and sexual selection},
  journal={Mind & Society},
  year={2008},
  month={June},
  volume={7},
  number={1},
  pages={65-76},
  doi={10.1007/s11299-007-0040-8},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/briscoe08MindSociety.html}
}