irregular verbs
grrlscientist | October 11, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, linguistics, evolution, irregular verbs, languages
When I was an undergrad, I almost took a degree in linguistics because I was so fascinated by languages, especially by the rate and patterns of change that languages undergo. So of course, I was excited to read two fascinating papers that were published in this week's issue of Nature. These papers find that individual words evolve in a predictable manner and this rate of evolution depends upon their frequency of use. Further, this predictability can be defined mathematically.
To test this hypothesis, one group…