Fading of collective attention shapes the evolution of linguistic variants

Abstract

Language change | collective attention | dynamical model marcos@df.uba.ar Language change involves the competition between alternative linguistic forms (1). The spontaneous evolution of these forms typically results in monotonic growths or decays (2, 3) like in winner-take-all attractor behaviors. In the case of the Spanish past subjunctive, the spontaneous evolution of its two competing forms (ended in -ra and -se) was perturbed by the appearance of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1713, which enforced the spelling of both forms as perfectly interchangeable variants (4), at a moment in which the -ra form was dominant (5). Time series extracted from a massive corpus of books (6) reveal that this regulation in fact produced a transient renewed interest for the old form -se which, once faded, left the -ra again as the dominant form up to the present day. We show that time series are successfully explained by a two-dimensional linear model that integrates an imitative and a novelty component. The model reveals that the temporal scale over which collective attention fades is in inverse proportion to the verb frequency. The integration of the two basic mechanisms of imitation and attention to novelty allows to understand diverse competing objects, with lifetimes that range from hours for memes and news (7, 8) to decades for verbs, suggesting the existence of a general mechanism underlying cultural evolution.Alternative linguistic forms such as synonyms (garbage-rubbish), spelling differences (behaviorbehaviour) or past-tense regularization (spilt-spilled) are in constant tension and present a unique case to study the dynamics of cultural transitions (2,9). This rivalry between competing cultural expressions occurs in a time-scale of centuries or decades, but similar phenomena can be observed also in the time scale of hours for memes (8) and days in news (7).Cultural transitions have been modeled with a variety of approaches going from formal and normative approaches (8, 10) to some that explicitly incorporate the cognitive mechanisms that may produce them (2,7,11,12). Distinct versions of the cognitive approach have proposed three mechanisms that account the fading of certain cultural forms, being replaced by alternative versions which dominate the scene: 1) limited attention, 2) imitation, and 3) preference for novelty or adaptation (7).

Networks and Identity Drive Geographic Properties of the Diffusion of Linguistic Innovation

“…On one hand, if agent j was previously exposed to the word but is not exposed at iteration t, their attention to the new word, and their likelihood of adoption, fades (71). 1 Since attention tends to fade exponentially (74), we assume that agents retain fraction r ∈ [0, 1] of their attention to the word as modeled in Equation 1: p j,w,t+1 = r • p jwt (1) On the other hand, an agent j updates their likelihood of using the word p j,w,t+1 if j's network neighbor i ∈ N (j) uses the word at iteration t, i ∈ adopt(t). At this point, agent j's mental representations are dominated by characteristics of this most recent exposure (13) and the salience of the innovation is determined by five main characteristics: (i) Novelty: With greater exposure, a word's novelty wears off and its salience declines (75).…”

“…If agent j was previously exposed to the word but is not exposed at iteration t, their attention to the new word, and their likelihood of adoption, fades (71). Since attention tends to fade exponentially (74), we assume that agents retain fraction r ∈ [0, 1] of their attention to the word as modeled in Equation S3:…”

“…Since sites like Twitter have large amounts of innovative content(73,74), we would assume that agents' attention to a new word would fade without exposure because of all of the other new content they are exposed to. This may not be as true in settings where there is less competing innovation.…”

“…In these cases, we can eliminate Equation 1 from the model 2. This assumption may not apply to more persistent innovations, whose adoption grows via an S-curve(30) Since new words that appear in social media tend to be fads whose adoption peaks and fades away with time (FigureS5), we model the decay of attention theorized to underly this temporal behavior(73,74). We can model more persistent change by removing the η parameter from the equation.…”