Abstract
The economics of language may not yet be a mainstream subfield of economics. It is, however, a vibrant area of study that has by now generated a substantial volume of research. The investigation of this topic is generally traced back to Marschak (1965), who appears to have been the first to bring economic concepts — such as costs and efficiency — to the study of language. Most of the chapters in this volume concern how language, broadly defined, influences economic variables; such research has demonstrated that there are benefits from incorporating linguistic variables and considerations into several different areas of traditional economic analysis. In this chapter I address the reverse question: how do economic analysis and economic reasoning provide insight into linguistic phenomena? More specifically, I consider how economics and economic models shed light on language change.
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© 2016 Andrew John
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John, A. (2016). Dynamic Models of Language Evolution: The Economic Perspective. In: Ginsburgh, V., Weber, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-32505-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-32505-1_4
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