As early indicated by Charles Darwin, languages behave and change very much
like living species. They display high diversity, differentiate in space and
time, emerge and disappear. A large body of literature has explored the role of
information exchanges and communicative constraints in groups of agents under
selective scenarios. These models have been very helpful in providing a
rationale on how complex forms of communication emerge under evolutionary
pressures. However, other patterns of large-scale organization can be described
using mathematical methods ignoring communicative traits. These approaches
consider shorter time scales and have been developed by exploiting both
theoretical ecology and statistical physics methods. The models are reviewed
here and include extinction, invasion, origination, spatial organization,
coexistence and diversity as key concepts and are very simple in their defining
rules. Such simplicity is used in order to catch the most fundamental laws of
organization and those universal ingredients responsible for qualitative
traits. The similarities between observed and predicted patterns indicate that
an ecological theory of language is emerging, supporting (on a quantitative
basis) its ecological nature, although key differences are also present. Here
we critically review some recent advances lying and outline their implications
and limitations as well as open problems for future research.Comment: 17 Pages. A review on current models from statistical Physics and
Theoretical Ecology applied to study language dynamic
