Ramifications of collective control

[bnhpct]

@rsmarken

I think Kent’s [1993] demonstration is the model (literally) for what you guys call “collective control”.

Yes, that is indeed what you think.

@rsmarken

In my view, a PCT explanation is a model that accounts for data, such as the models of various examples of group behavior described in Chapter 7 of The Study of Living Control Systems, that account for two person cooperation and conflict, human crowd behavior, avian flocking behavior, and geographical differences in how different groups pronounce phonemes.

1. two person cooperation and conflict: Kent’s 1993 model
2. human crowd behavior: Bill’s Crowd demo, control of proximity and goal or leader
3. avian flocking behavior: an adaptation of the crowd demo based on Reynolds (1987), control of proximity to others, like heading, and avoidance of periphery of flock is probably a better bet than “movement toward the center”. Another perhaps less obvious evolutionary advantage is a predatory raptor’s challenges picking an individual prey from what appears to behave as a single very large organism, and uncertainty how to accomplish it unscathed might be relevant: I have many times seen a few rather small birds harrying a hawk from their territories.
4. geographical differences in how different groups pronounce phonemes: a preliminary, partial model with a number of assumptions and results which contradict the data.

This is a preliminary model of a more general tendency of pronunciations to converge which is often resisted for various reasons. It is not a model of Labov’s data. The data are about a previously inexplicable reversal of a sound change in the au diphthong that had been going on in the prior couple of generations, and not only reversed, but that change (the a becoming lower and more open) being generalized to the ai diphthong. The data include information about adolescents’ social identity and future life and work expectations. The change in pronunciation by adolescents was not correlated with who they most associated with, it was correlated with a choice of adult identity, irrespective of time in proximity.

SFAIK there has been no advance since this summary in November 2018:

@bnhpct

Yes, this is much better. It’s a partial model of dialect divergence. Partial: as you say, among the conditions for emulation it includes only proximity. And it is unclear what is being controlled. It sounds like cause-effect: proximity to another causes convergence of an ‘internal’ value (more like an attribute) toward that of the other. You haven’t indicated how many approaches occur during a run that are close enough to trip this convergence of references. Observationally, change within a speech community is rather slow, typically requiring decades in stable social conditions. Are there enough ‘contacts’ for any given agent during a run to correlate with the number of speech interactions over a decade or so? preference for approximating one kind of exemplary person and/or distancing oneself from the other kind of exemplar would have a slowing effect on the convergence.

To this I have added that while change in the community is typically rather slow, change in an individual can be quite rapid, as I witnessed when my oldest daughter lived with us for a relatively short time in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

@bnhpct

RM: This is really interesting stuff and I would really like to keep working on it. But I’ve got other priorities at the moment but I could elevate the priority of this work if I could get a linguist or sociologist to work on it with me.

Well, you’ve got one linguist here. Tell me what you need from me. Kent may be winding down or out into other engagements, but he might take an interest. Kent, might any of your students be interested?

Nothing after that.

Yes, to make a model you need data to model. To get beyond simplified models of simple social phenomena we have to deal with considerably more complex data and higher levels of the hierarchy.