English noun/verb (N/V) pairs (contract, cement) have undergone complex patterns of change between 3 stress patterns for several centuries. We describe a longitu- dinal dataset of N/V pair pronunciations, leading to a set of properties to be ac- counted for by any computational model. We analyze the dynamics of 5 dynamical systems models of linguistic populations, each derived from a model of learning by individuals. We compare each model’s dy- namics to a set of properties observed in the N/V data, and reason about how as- sumptions about individual learning affect population-level dynamics.

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