{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/spin-glass-models-of-syntax-and-language","title":"Spin Glass Models of Syntax and Language Evolution","arxiv_id":"1508.00504","date":"2015-07-31","proceeding":null,"authors":["Karthik Siva","Jim Tao","Matilde Marcolli"],"abstract":"Using the SSWL database of syntactic parameters of world languages, and the\nMIT Media Lab data on language interactions, we construct a spin glass model of\nlanguage evolution. We treat binary syntactic parameters as spin states, with\nlanguages as vertices of a graph, and assigned interaction energies along the\nedges. We study a rough model of syntax evolution, under the assumption that a\nstrong interaction energy tends to cause parameters to align, as in the case of\nferromagnetic materials. We also study how the spin glass model needs to be\nmodified to account for entailment relations between syntactic parameters. This\nmodification leads naturally to a generalization of Potts models with external\nmagnetic field, which consists of a coupling at the vertices of an Ising model\nand a Potts model with q=3, that have the same edge interactions. We describe\nthe results of simulations of the dynamics of these models, in different\ntemperature and energy regimes. We discuss the linguistic interpretation of the\nparameters of the physical model.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.00504v1","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.00504v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"spin-glass-models-of-syntax-and-language","repo_url":"https://github.com/pointofnoreturn/spin_glass_model","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}