Recent research has shown that there is a direct relationship between frequency and stability of linguistic variants: the more frequent a given variant is, the less it tends to change over time. This relationship holds basic relevance for language evolution: not only can it inform increasingly accurate deep language phylogenies (as in Pagel, Atkinson, Calude, & Meade, 2013), but we will argue it can also provide a unique window into the evolutionary dynamics of language systems, shedding light on the interplay between stability at the system level and instability at the word level...
Frequency and stability of linguistic variants
Claudio Castellano;Francesca Colaiori;
2014
Abstract
Recent research has shown that there is a direct relationship between frequency and stability of linguistic variants: the more frequent a given variant is, the less it tends to change over time. This relationship holds basic relevance for language evolution: not only can it inform increasingly accurate deep language phylogenies (as in Pagel, Atkinson, Calude, & Meade, 2013), but we will argue it can also provide a unique window into the evolutionary dynamics of language systems, shedding light on the interplay between stability at the system level and instability at the word level...File in questo prodotto:
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