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Article published In: Tracking Language Evolution as an Interdisciplinary, Cross-Theoretical Enterprise
Edited by Livio Gaeta
[Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 2:2] 2020
► pp. 127–137

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What are the determinants of survival curves of words?

An evolutionary linguistics approach

 | KU Leuven
 | KU Leuven | FWO-Vlaanderen
Published online: 15 January 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00019.vel
Abstract
An evolutionary approach to historical linguistics can be enlightening when not only the mechanisms, but also the statistical methods are considered from neighboring disciplines. In this short paper, we apply survival analysis to investigate what factors determine the lifespan of words. Our case study is on post-classical Greek from the 4th century bc to the beginning of the 8th century ad. We find that lower frequency and phonetically longer lexemes suffer earlier deaths. Furthermore, verbs turn out to have higher survival rates than adjectives and nouns.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods and data
  • 3.Results and discussion
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
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2023. Diachrony and Diachronica . Diachronica 40:5 ► pp. 666 ff. DOI logo
VOGELSANGER, JOHANNA
2023. Survival factors in the early Middle English lexicon. English Language and Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 661 ff. DOI logo
Van de Velde, Freek & Isabeau De Smet
2022. Markov Models for Multi-state Language Change. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 29:3 ► pp. 314 ff. DOI logo

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