What we do

The Cultural Evolution of Language Lab is a research group and laboratory in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. It is directed by Gareth Roberts.

We conduct experimental research on the cultural evolution of language. Experiments we run often involve “laboratory languages”. That is, they often involve participants learning miniature artificial languages and using them to communicate with each other; alternatively, they involve participants constructing novel communication systems from scratch. This approach is sometimes referred to as Experimental Semiotics. In some cases, no communication is involved per se, and we simply focus on the process of learning. One of the focuses of our research at Penn, with its long and distinguished history of innovative research on language variation, is on the role of social factors in cultural evolution. But our research is not wholly restricted to this, or even to laboratory language experiments; some recent and current projects are listed below. On the left is a list of current lab members.

  • Structural change in cases of language shift
  • Bridging contexts in semantic change (with Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Alice Eddyshaw)
  • Grammatical change in heritage languages (with Hannah Nieuwveld and Cimani Smith)
  • The emergence of case and gender marking (with Hannah Nieuwveld, Nilla Orina, and John Yang)
  • The effect of AI agents on group dynamics (with Fabian Baumann)
  • Linguistic and genetic data in the history of Britain (with Iain Mathieson)
  • Drift and selection in regularization and lexical replacement (with Wesley Lincoln and Rafael Ventura)
  • Individual differences in sociolinguistics (with Péter Rácz)
  • The dynamics of synonymy (with Aja Altenhof)