Computer simulation as a scientific approach in evolutionary linguistics

Computer simulation has recently been adopted into the research of language evolution. As a general review to linguists, we discuss in this paper: why we need computer simulation in evolutionary linguistics; what are the primary advantages and inevitable limitations of this approach; and how to transform the abstract theories or hypotheses of language evolution into the physical mechanisms or scenarios in language evolution models. In the end, we point out the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration between the modelers and linguists for the future development of computer simulation research in evolutionary linguistics.