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Key research themes
1. How do social network structures influence the spread and variation of languages in multilingual online communities?
This research area investigates the role of micro-level social networks—such as families, friends, and neighborhoods—in shaping linguistic variation and facilitating language spread, particularly focusing on multilingual users in online social media platforms like Twitter. Understanding how integration within social networks and multiplex social ties influence language choices and cross-language communication is critical for explaining language diversity maintenance and change in a digitally connected, multicultural context.
Key finding: The paper establishes that linguistic variation correlates significantly with an individual's integration into their social network, characterized by factors such as network density and multiplexity. Applying social network... Read more
2. What sociological and demographic factors drive large-scale language shift, and how can big data quantify this phenomenon?
This theme centers on quantitative modeling of language shift processes in communities with millions of speakers, integrating social factors like urbanization, ethnicity, economic development, gender, and religion. Employing large population census datasets, the focus lies on understanding the interplay of these traits in accelerating or decelerating shift from local to dominant national languages. This approach bridges micro-level ethnographic insights with macro-level statistical evidence to advance a typology of endangerment scenarios and improve vitality assessments beyond small community studies.
Key finding: Using Indonesian census data, the study quantitatively demonstrates that socio-demographic variables including urbanization and ethnicity are statistically correlated with shifts from local to national language usage. The... Read more
3. Do linguistic features spread globally by language contact diffusion or by population migration, and how do differential stability and inheritability shape this process?
This research addresses the mechanisms underlying global linguistic diversity, distinguishing horizontal contact-driven diffusion from vertical transmission via migration. It evaluates how distinct structural features, such as nominal categorization systems (gender, noun classes, classifiers), exhibit varying diffusion rates and heritability. The investigation integrates stability metrics with phylogenetic and geographic analyses to reveal the relative contributions of contact and inheritance in shaping language typology worldwide.
Key finding: The study presents a comprehensive database of over 3000 languages annotated for nominal classification systems, empirically demonstrating that classifiers diffuse more rapidly through language contact due to their lower... Read more
4. How have historical, political, and cultural factors driven the global spread of dominant languages such as English, Japanese, and Turkic languages?
This theme investigates the interplay of economic, military, and political power with language spread, focusing on the development of global lingua francas and national language policies. It evaluates historical cases of language expansion—English as a global language, Japanese spread within its territories and colonies, and Turkic language expansion in Anatolia—to understand mechanisms such as standardization, colonial language planning, and sociopolitical assimilation underlying language dominance in a globalized world.
Key finding: Contrary to expectations of increasing returns leading to universal language consolidation, the paper shows that language size and growth rates are largely uncorrelated except for very small languages under 35,000 speakers,... Read more
Key finding: The paper highlights the socio-political, economic, and military factors that propelled English as a lingua franca and traces its role in globalization. It critiques simplistic views of language spread as either beneficial or... Read more
Key finding: This work analyzes Japanese language spread as a state-driven nation-building and colonial assimilation project—starting domestically and extending overseas—highlighting how language policy was pivotal in imagining national... Read more
Key finding: Providing a historical linguistic geography study, the paper situates the Turkic language spread in Anatolia as a relatively recent phenomenon linked to population migrations and sociopolitical changes in the first half of... Read more
5. How do environmental, sociocultural, and technological factors drive continuous language evolution and modality change?
This research explores dynamic, context-dependent evolution of language structures and modality categories influenced by ecological, demographic, social, and technological niches. It examines how linguistic innovations, such as causativization patterns or the adoption of modal auxiliaries, arise and diffuse in sociolinguistically complex settings including frontier zones and rapidly advancing communication technologies, framing language as an adaptive cultural skill.
Key finding: The study identifies causativization as a linguistic attractor favored under frontier sociolinguistic conditions promoting language contact and symbiosis. Surveying diverse global areas, it finds convergent derivational... Read more
Key finding: This article synthesizes evidence supporting language as a dynamic skill evolving through usage and shaped by multimodal communicative pressures and environmental, socio-demographic, and technological factors—especially... Read more