Economics of language

Abstract

A communication system may or may not be optimal with respect to some scale of values (utilities) that can be achieved by its use, combined with the probabilities of each of the possible achievements. One particular value is that of survival; for example, the survival of a given set of traits of a language, possibly depending on the survival of a given social form, or its physical carrier, a society. The study of survival probabilities would help to explain why the known living or dead languages are what they are or were. Here an “explanatory” or “evolutionary” approach is constrasted with the “normative” approach which has its example in debates about dictionaries, where certain other values besides that of survival are considered.

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