Linguistics and astrophysics may be an unlikely combination, but it’s proving to be a winning one! We already know it from the study of geospatial distribution of linguistic features by Henri Kauhanen, Deepthi Gopal, Tobias Galla and Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero in Sciences Advances, and it seems these four are not done yet. In most recent news, Ricardo and Tobias have received an APEX award for interdisciplinary research by the Royal Society in partnership with the British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and with support from the Leverhulme Trust. The project, titled “A voter-model approach to the distribution and dynamics of typological features of language” applies methods from physics to solve a linguistic problem. Physicists have been using language to their own benefit for a while, so now it’s our turn. In order to fully reproduce the winning formula, Ricardo and Tobias will be joined by Henri and Deepthi to work on a new model of language change. Manchet is most excited to see what they come up with. Will report.
Featured photo shows the type of sciency stuff that gets produced when linguists and physicists put their heads together and think
Manchet 
Posted on May 20, 2021 by manling