Zusammenfassung
Several important recent advances in various sciences (particularly biology and physics) are based
on complex network analysis, which provides tools for characterising statistical properties of net-
works and explaining how they may arise. This article examines the relevance of this trend for the
study of human languages. We review some early eorts to build up language networks, charac-
terise their properties, and show in which direction models are being developed to explain them.
These insights are relevant, both for studying fundamental unsolved puzzles in cognitive science,
in particular the origins and evolution of language, but also for recent data-driven statistical
approaches to natural language.
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