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Words that change often across languages seem to change a lot within a language too

Arne Mooers Panayiotis Pappas

Irish_A Irish_B Welsh_N Welsh_C Breton_List Breton_SE Breton_ST Rumanian_List Vlach Italian Ladin Provencal French Walloon French_Creole_C French_Creole_D Sardinian_N Sardinian_L Sardinian_C Spanish Portuguese_ST Brazilian Catalan German_ST Penn._Dutch Dutch_List Afrikaans Flemish Frisian Swedish_Up Swedish_VL Swedish_List Danish Riksmal Icelandic_ST Faroese English_ST Takitaki Lithuanian_O Lithuanian_ST Latvian Slovenian Lusatian_L Lusatian_U Czech Slovak Czech_E Ukrainian Byelorussian Polish Russian Macedonian Bulgarian Serbocroatian Gyps_Gk Singhalese Kashmiri Marathi Gujarati Panjabi_ST Lahnda Hindi Bengali Nepali_List Khaskura Greek_ML Greek_MD Greek_Mod Greek_D Greek_K Armenian_Mod Armenian_List Ossetic Afghan Waziri Persian_List Tadzik Baluchi Wakhi Albanian_T Albanian_Top Albanian_G Albanian_K Albanian_C Russian_P Ukrainian_P Byelorussian_P Polish_P Slovak_P Czech_P Slovenian_P Serbocroatian_P Macedonian_P Bulgarian_P Albanian

wikipedia

Pagel et al., 2007

Tree of 87 Indo-European languages

ALL!AND!ANIMAL!ASHES!AT!BACK!BAD!BARK(OFATREE)!BECAUSE!BELLY!BIG!BIRD!TO_BITE!BLACK!BLOOD!TO_BLOW(WIND)!BONE!TO_BREATHE!TO_BURN(INT.)!CHILD(YOUNG)!CLOUD!COLD(WEATHER)!TO_COME!TO_COUNT!TO_CUT!

DAY(NOT NIGHT)!TO_DIE!TO_DIG!DIRTY!DOG!TO_DRINK!DRY(SUBST.)!DULL(KNIFE)!DUST!EAR!EARTH!TO_EAT!EGG!EYE!TO_FALL!FAR!FAT(SUBST.)!FATHER!TO_FEAR!FEATHER!FEW!TO_FIGHT!FIRE FISH!FIVE!

Start of Swadesh list of words, words that often undergo descent with modification

CHILD: has 36 different forms among 87 I-E languages

form 1: CHILD - English ! ! !DJALE - Albanian

! SHURU - Kashmiri

form 2. BERNS - Latvian ! BARN - Norwegian

form 3. ENFANT - French ! FANCIULLO - Italian

…

form 36. PEHDI - Greek





TO_DIE: has 7 different forms among 87 languages

form 1. DIE - English ! DO - Norwegian

form 2. MOURIR - French ! MORIR - Spanish ! MORIRE - Italian!! UMYRATY - Ukranian ! DA UMRE - Bulgarian

...

form 6. STERVEN - German

form 7. PETHENO - Greek



FIVE: has only 1 form among all 87 languages

form 1. FIVE - English !!! FEM - Norwegian ! CINQ - French!! P’JAT’ – Ukranian ! PET - Bulgarian

FUNF - German PENDE - Greek CUIG – Irish

! PINDZE - Afghan ! PAE – Gujarati

...etc. etc.

Pagel et al. also estimated an instantaneous replacement rate (or “macro_rate”) for each of 200 core words.

R = 0.95

macro_rate estimated on the tree is (pretty much) the number of forms across the 87 languages

macro_rate

number of forms

macro_rate

number of forms

ALL!AND!ANIMAL!ASHES!AT!BACK!BAD!BARK(OFATREE)!BECAUSE!BELLY!BIG!BIRD!TO_BITE!BLACK!BLOOD!TO_BLOW(WIND)!BONE!TO_BREATHE!TO_BURN(INT)!CHILD(YOUNG)!CLOUD!COLD(WEATHER)!TO_COME!TO_COUNT!TO CUT!


And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele

And lead you us not in temptation, but loose us of evil.



And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele

And lead you us not in temptation, but loose us of evil.

~1000 years of within-lineage, “micro_change”



1. Do words that are replaced at a high rate across lineages (“macro_rate”) also change a lot within lineages (“micro_change”)?



Old English Modern English amount of “micro” change ban bone 0 (sound change) cild child 0 (sound change) scrat+cratch scratch 1 (contamination) thes this 1 (analogical extension) baeli = bag belly 2 (lexical substitution) blostma flower 2 (borrowed from OFr.)

McFarlane Toys



0 10 20 30 40 50

a lot

some

none

prob

(am

ount

of c

hang

e)

75

50

25

0

number of forms in Indo-European

Ordinal Logistic Regression, χ12 = 9.38, p = 0.002! include part of speech, χ12 = 5.80, p = 0.015!

words that change often (macro), also change a lot (micro)



(ordinal logistic regression) AIC notes

micro_change ~ macro_rate 299.7 t = 4.11***

Within English vs. Across Indo-European 185 items (200 - 3 conj. and 3 preps. and 9 unscoreable items)



conj. prep. adjective verb noun adverb pronoun number

Most of the Swadesh words are adjectives, verbs or nouns

Does variation in “part of speech” explain the correlation? (analogy: morphology vs. behaviour, base position?)




micro_change ~ macro_rate 299.7 tmacro = 4.11***

micro_change ~ macro_rate + tmacro = 4.06*** part_of_speech 297.6

Repeated micro vs. macro comparison for:

Ancient – Modern Greek tmacro > 2.4* Old – Modern Russian tmacro > 2.8** Latin – Spanish tmacro > 2.6*

Within English vs. Across Indo-European



1. Do words that are replaced at a high rate across lineages (“macro_rate”) also change a lot within lineages (“micro_change”)?

2. Is there a mechanism to predict these changes?

02

46

8

Frequency of Word Use Today (ppM)

Repla

cem

ent R

ate

5 50 500 5000

potential mechanism:

Pagel et al., 2007

r = - 0.37***



Words that are used often are under stronger stabilizing selection, and so change less often

If within-language forces shape the rate of change of words across languages, then we should be able to see this pattern within a single language through time

leads to the hypothesis:

Pagel et al.’s proposed explanation:






micro_change ~ word_use 316.9 tword_use = -1.19







micro_change ~ word_use 316.9 tword_use = -1.19

micro_change ~ macro_rate + tmacro = 3.98*** word_use 301.5 tword_use = 0.4




micro_change vs. word_use comparison for:

Ancient – Modern Greek tmicro = -1.69 Old – Modern Russian tmicro = -1.68 Latin – Spanish tmicro = -2.98***

The trend is weak…except for Latin to Spanish

We have now repeated this for three other lineages

Old Russian – Modern Russian association with number of forms: p = 0.0001 association with word use: p = 0.13

Ancient Greek– Modern Greek association with number of forms: p=0.0001 association with word use: p = 0.07

Latin – Spanish association with number of forms: p = 0.001 association with word use: p = 0.004



“Micro” evolutionary change within four languages is correlated with “macro” evolutionary replacement rate across languages.

Frequency of word use (today) is only a weak predictor of within-language change across four languages.

κοιλια! γαστηρ!

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