  An earlier study (Nettle 1999b) concluded, based on computer simulations and
some inferences from empirical data, that languages will change the more slowly
the larger the population gets. We replicate this study using a more complete
language model for simulations (the Schulze model combined with a
Barabasi-Albert net- work) and a richer empirical dataset (the World Atlas of
Language Structures edited by Haspelmath et al. 2005). Our simulations show
either a weak or stronger dependence of language change on population sizes
depending on the parameter settings, and empirical data, like some of the
simulations, show a weak dependence.
