IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v449y2007i7163d10.1038_nature06176.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Pagel

    (School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AS, UK
    Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA)

  • Quentin D. Atkinson

    (School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AS, UK)

  • Andrew Meade

    (School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AS, UK)

Abstract

Words on the brink As a language evolves, grammatical rules emerge and exceptions die out. Lieberman et al. have calculated the rate at which a language grows more regular, based on 1,200 years of English usage. Of 177 irregular verbs, 79 became regular in the last millennium. And the trend follows a simple rule: a verb's half-life scales as the square root of its frequency. Irregular verbs that are 100 times as rare regularize 10 times faster. The emergence of a rule (such as adding –ed for the past tense) spells death for exceptional forms. The cover graphic makes the point: verb size corresponds to usage frequency, so large verbs stay at the top, and small verbs fall to the bottom. 'Wed', the next irregular verb to go, is on the brink. In a separate study, Pagel et al. looked at changing word meanings. Across the Indo-European languages, words like 'tail' or 'bird' evolve rapidly and are expressed by many unrelated words. Others, like 'two', are expressed by closely related word forms across the whole language family. Data from over 80 modern languages show that the more a word is used, the less it changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Pagel & Quentin D. Atkinson & Andrew Meade, 2007. "Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history," Nature, Nature, vol. 449(7163), pages 717-720, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7163:d:10.1038_nature06176
    DOI: 10.1038/nature06176
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06176
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature06176?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alberto Acerbi & Vasileios Lampos & Philip Garnett & R Alexander Bentley, 2013. "The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-6, March.
    2. Nico Neureiter & Peter Ranacher & Nour Efrat-Kowalsky & Gereon A. Kaiping & Robert Weibel & Paul Widmer & Remco R. Bouckaert, 2022. "Detecting contact in language trees: a Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Animesh Mukherjee & Francesca Tria & Andrea Baronchelli & Andrea Puglisi & Vittorio Loreto, 2011. "Aging in Language Dynamics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(2), pages 1-7, February.
    4. Liang Xu & Min Xu & Zehua Jiang & Xin Wen & Yishan Liu & Zaoyi Sun & Hongting Li & Xiuying Qian, 2023. "How have music emotions been described in Google books? Historical trends and corpus differences," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    5. Kobayashi, Yutaka & Kurokawa, Shun & Ishii, Takuya & Wakano, Joe Yuichiro, 2021. "Time to extinction of a cultural trait in an overlapping generation model," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 32-45.
    6. Damian Ruck & R. Alexander Bentley & Alberto Acerbi & Philip Garnett & Daniel J. Hruschka, 2017. "Role Of Neutral Evolution In Word Turnover During Centuries Of English Word Popularity," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(06n07), pages 1-16, September.
    7. Job Schepens & Ton Dijkstra & Franc Grootjen & Walter J B van Heuven, 2013. "Cross-Language Distributions of High Frequency and Phonetically Similar Cognates," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Danqing Zhang & Guowen Huang & Jiaen Zhang & Xiaoyu Hou & Tianyi Zhou & Xianyuan Chang & Ying Ge & Jie Chang, 2022. "The Evolution of Sustainability Ideas in China from 1946 to 2015, Quantified by Culturomics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-12, May.
    9. Dustin S. Stoltz & Marshall A. Taylor, 2019. "Concept Mover’s Distance: measuring concept engagement via word embeddings in texts," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 293-313, July.
    10. Simone Pompei & Vittorio Loreto & Francesca Tria, 2011. "On the Accuracy of Language Trees," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(6), pages 1-11, June.
    11. Xi, Ning & Zhang, Zi-Ke & Zhang, Yi-Cheng & Ge, Zehui & She, Li & Zhang, Kui, 2014. "Cultural evolution: The case of babies’ first names," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 406(C), pages 139-144.
    12. Ackermann, Malte, 2013. "The communication of innovation: an empirical analysis of the advancement of innovation," Discussion Papers on Strategy and Innovation 13-02, Philipps-University Marburg, Department of Technology and Innovation Management (TIM).
    13. Heng Chen & Junying Liang & Haitao Liu, 2015. "How Does Word Length Evolve in Written Chinese?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-12, September.
    14. Eduardo G Altmann & Janet B Pierrehumbert & Adilson E Motter, 2011. "Niche as a Determinant of Word Fate in Online Groups," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(5), pages 1-12, May.
    15. Berman, Alexander & Mudambi, Ram & Shoham, Amir, 2022. "Linguistic structures and innovation: A behavioral approach," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(4).
    16. Massimiliano Agovino & Michele Bevilacqua & Massimiliano Cerciello, 2022. "Language as a proxy for cultural change. A contrastive analysis for French and Italian lexicon on male homosexuality," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 149-172, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7163:d:10.1038_nature06176. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.