From: dgkilday57
Message: 68945
Date: 2012-03-12
>"Law-like influence" is stretching things a bit, and frequency can hardly be the kingpin. I would bet my pants that 'tail' is more frequent than 'woad' with most English-speakers, for example.
> W dniu 2012-03-09 22:20, Tavi pisze:
>
> > > While it has been estimated that *some* very common lexical
> > > items may have expected "half-lives" of ten thousand years or more,
> > > usable evidence sooner or later evaporates due to lexical replacement,
> > > cross-linguistic diffusion, etc.
> > >
> > This sounds me to lexicostatistical pseudo-science (not that I like to
> > use this word, but as somebody here has hurled it at me, I feel
> > legitimate to use it).
>
> I don't mean lexicostatistics/glottochronology. I mean actual studies of
> rates of lexical replacement like this one:
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/abs/nature06176.html