--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
> From: "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
>> Section: SCIENCE NEWS This Week
>> Probing the process of word evolution
>> Here's an evolutionary talking point: Two new studies quantify
>> parts of the mechanism by which frequently used words change
>> slowly over many millennia whereas rarely used words more
>> rapidly take on new forms.
>> In fact, frequency of word usage exerts a "lawlike" influence on
>> the rapidity of language evolution, the research teams conclude
>> in the Oct. 11 Nature.
[...]
> What is the difference between this "new tool"
> and the good old glottochronology of Swadesh ?
The two have very little in common beyond the idea that there
might be some underlying statistical regularity in language
change. The old glottochronology assumed a constant rate of
lexical replacement and used that assumption to set up a simple
differential equation whose (straightforward) solution would,
if the model were correct, allow dates of separation of two
languages to be calculated from the percentage of cognates in
the Swadesh list. Unfortunately, it is easily demonstrated
that the rate of lexical replacement *isn't* constant across
languages.
In these studies the emphasis is entirely different: they both
suggest that the rate of lexical change -- replacement in the
one case and regularization in the other -- varies inversely
with frequency of use.
Brian