From: Rick McCallister
Message: 60993
Date: 2008-10-18
> From: bmscotttg <BMScott@...>Is there a way of proving this method works? I'm thinking of "bad" --one of the most common words in English, which often means "good"
> Subject: Re: [tied] Probing the process of word evolution (in Indo European languages)
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, October 18, 2008, 12:56 AM
> --- 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