Most all words replaced in 2000 years
August 25th, 02007 by Alexander Rose
This is a great appendix I just came across on the half life of vocabulary in a language. From the text:
The rate of vocabulary change The half-life of a word is the amount of time required for there to be a 50% chance that it will be replaced by a new word. Most words have a half-life of 2,000 years. However, a small number of words have a half-life of greater than 10,000 years. This shows that despite the fast average pace of language evolution, some meanings, like highly-conserved genes, evolve at a slow rate. The y axis in the graphic is the number out of a sample of 200 meanings. (ref. 1)
August 27th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Is there a pattern associated with which words last shorter or longer? The appendix didn’t reference one, but it might be interesting to speculate…
January 9th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
How are these numbers estimated? I.e. is it a computer model, and where did they found a meaning of word 10000 ago. I can’t remember any writing system that existed then.