# lang: surface tension dynamics at boundaries to understand dialect spread and extinction

<< It has recently been proposed that the spatial evolution of dialects can be understood using surface tension at linguistic boundaries >>

J.B. << shows that the inclusion of long-range interactions in the surface tension model generates both wave-like spread, and hierarchical diffusion, and that it is surface tension that is the dominant effect in deciding the stable distribution of dialect patterns >>

J.B. << generalizes the model to allow population mixing which can induce shrinkage of linguistic domains, or destroy dialect regions from within >>

James Burridge. Unifying models of dialect spread and extinction using surface tension dynamics. R Soc Open Sci. 2018 Jan; 5(1): 171446.
doi:  10.1098/rsos.171446. Jan 3, 2018.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5792924/