Studies of language change and variation in sociolinguistics investigate the correlations between social variables and phenomena like vernacular speech norms, code switching, and dialect continua. In multiple studies, researchers claim one variable as (a) particularly decisive and correlative for a number of phenomena and (b) almost universally applicable: the social network structure (Milroy, 1980). This article summarizes previous work incorporating network theory in questions of language change and discusses a practice noticeably absent from classical sociolinguistics: the simulation of language change. In simulation experiments, sociolinguistic theories of language change – especially those employing social network structure – can be tested in a virtual society free from the hindrance of data sparseness. In this context, the model of game theory can be utilized to construct individuals' interaction for more robust and feasible results.

中文翻译：

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语言变更和网络游戏

社会语言学中的语言变化和变异研究研究了社会变量与白话语音规范，代码转换和方言连续性等现象之间的相关性。在多项研究中，研究人员称一个变量为（a）对许多现象具有决定性和相关性，并且（b）几乎普遍适用：社会网络结构（Milroy，1980）。本文总结了先前将网络理论整合到语言变化问题中的工作，并讨论了经典社会语言学中明显缺乏的一种实践：语言变化的模拟。在模拟实验中，可以在没有数据稀疏障碍的虚拟社会中测试语言变化的社会语言理论，尤其是采用社交网络结构的语言理论。在这种情况下，