Henri Kauhanen
Postdoctoral Researcher / ERC project STARFISH / University of Konstanz
henri.kauhanen (prep) uni-konstanz (dot) de
Selected papers
Sociolinguistic typology meets historical corpus linguistics
George Walkden, Gemma Hunter McCarley, Raquel Montero, Molly Rolf, Sarah Einhaus & Henri Kauhanen
Transactions of the Philological Society, 121(3), 546–567 (2023)
Discussing how to use historical corpora to assess questions of sociolinguistic typology, this paper puts forth the raison d’être of the STARFISH project.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12275
Grammar competition, speaker models and rates of change: A critical reappraisal of the Constant Rate Hypothesis
Journal of Historical Syntax, 7(18), 1–31 (2023)
Models of constancy/variability of rates of change in language must show empirical fit, theoretical parsimony and ontological interpretability of key model parameters.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2023.v7i6-19.148
Language structure is influenced by the proportion of non-native speakers: A reply to Koplenig (2019)
Henri Kauhanen, Sarah Einhaus & George Walkden
Journal of Language Evolution (2023)
Both a complete cases analysis and a multiple imputation analysis of Koplenig’s data suggest that higher proportions of second-language learners correlate with lower morphological complexity.
Closed access: https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzad005
Pre/postprint: papers/koplenig-reply.pdf
A bifurcation threshold for contact-induced language change
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 7(1), 1–32 (2022)
The fraction of L2 (second-language) learners present in a speech community must exceed a critical threshold for L2-difficult features to be lost.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8211
Geospatial distributions reflect temperatures of linguistic features
Henri Kauhanen, Deepthi Gopal, Tobias Galla & Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero
Science Advances, 7, eabe6540 (2021)
The propensity of features of language to change can be measured using a temperature-like quantity.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe6540
Replicator–mutator dynamics of linguistic convergence and divergence
Royal Society Open Science, 7, 201682 (2020)
Sociolinguistic identity maintenance can be understood as a population game with nonlinear fitness.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201682
Stable variation in multidimensional competition
The Determinants of Diachronic Stability (Benjamins) (2019)
Stable variation can arise when multiple grammars compete.
Closed access: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.254.11kau
Pre/postprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.06265
Deriving the Constant Rate Effect
Henri Kauhanen & George Walkden
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 36(2), 483–521 (2018)
The Constant Rate Effect, or something like it, arises from the interplay of variational learning and production biases.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9380-1
Neutral change
Journal of Linguistics, 53(2), 327–358 (2017)
Changes can be well-behaved even if they are selectively neutral.
Closed access: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226716000141
Pre/postprint: papers/neutral-change.pdf
Thesis
Individual and population in language change: mathematical explorations of the acquisition–use loop
(2018)
PhD Thesis in Linguistics, The University of Manchester
Open access: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/93532746/FULL_TEXT.PDF
Trajectory
2021–
Postdoc in the ERC project STARFISH
University of Konstanz
2019–2021
Postdoctoral Fellow, Zukunftskolleg
University of Konstanz
2019
Complex Systems Summer School
Santa Fe Institute
2018–2019
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Manchester
2017–2018
Akademischer Mitarbeiter, Department of Linguistics
University of Konstanz
2014–2018
PhD (Linguistics)
University of Manchester
2005–2013
BA (Cognitive Science), BA (English Philology), MA (Cognitive Science)
University of Helsinki
Stuff
I’m also an amateur musician, coffee enthusiast, bicycle enthusiast, occasional photographer, and maker. You can read more about these extra-academic interests here.