In a new study published in Nature, researchers in Linguistics and Evolutionary Biology have joined forces at the University of Pennsylvania to solve an essential problem of how languages evolve: determining whether language changes occur by random chance or by a selective force.
The Nature article: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature24455.html
The Penn News article: https://news.upenn.edu/news/luck-plays-role-how-language-evolves-penn-te...
For more articles commenting on the Nature article (Newsweek, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Nature Magazine and Buzzfeed): http://web.sas.upenn.edu/robinclark/press/