言語学者が数千年にわたる音韻の変化をシミュレートする言語モデルを使用している。このモデルは100年あたり1.8%の語 Changes率を予測している。現在の語の数が50,000である場合、200年後にはいくつの音韻変化が発生すると予測されるか？ - Upplift
Simulating Thousands of Years of Sound Changes: How Linguists Model Language Evolution
Simulating Thousands of Years of Sound Changes: How Linguists Model Language Evolution
Language is not static — it evolves continuously over centuries, shaped by social, cultural, and cognitive forces. A groundbreaking approach in historical linguistics involves using advanced language models to simulate and predict how sound systems (phonology) change over millennia. Recent studies employ computational models that estimate historical sound changes by analyzing patterns across thousands of years, offering insights into the future trajectory of languages.
One key metric in such simulations is the rate of phonemic change — how often sounds shift within a language’s sound inventory. A recent model developed by researchers demonstrates a projected phonemic change rate of 1.8% per century, reflecting typical historical trends where around 1.8% of phonemes shift or disappear every 100 years. This rate accounts for factors like vowel mergers, consonant simplifications, and stress shifts observed in real language evolution.
Understanding the Context
Given that modern languages currently possess approximately 50,000 distinct phonemes (expanded from historical baselines), these models can project long-term change. With a 1.8% annual shift per 100 years, the model predicts a cumulative transformation over 200 years.
Calculating phoneme changes:
- Change rate: 1.8% per century
- Time span: 200 years = 2 centuries
- Phonemic changes over 200 years ≈ (1.018)^2 ≈ 1.0366 or ~3.66% increase in phonemic inventory over two centuries
Applying this to the current count:
50,000 × 1.0366 ≈ 51,830 phonemes projected in 200 years, implying approximately 1,830 phonemic changes—or shifts, mergers, or innovations—due to the modeled rate.
This simulation supports the hypothesis that sound systems evolve incrementally but cumulatively. While unpredictable events like language contact or societal upheaval influence exact outcomes, computational models help linguists quantify long-term change with increasing precision. By integrating historical data with predictive algorithms, researchers deepen our understanding of how phonological systems transform across millennia — revealing the dynamic heartbeat of language itself.
Key Insights
In summary, future sound changes simulated by state-of-the-art models suggest a steady evolution of phoneme inventories, with thousands of subtle and some more dramatic transformations anticipated over two centuries. Such insights open new doors for bridging historical linguistics with data-driven forecasting.
