Physicists Discover Evolutionary Laws of Language 287
Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Shea writes in the WSJ that physicists studying Google's massive collection of scanned books claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words, marking an advance in a new field dubbed 'Culturomics': the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Published in Science, their paper gives the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English — a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 348,000), with more than half of the language considered 'dark matter' that has evaded standard dictionaries (PDF). The paper tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world's English-speaking population switches from 'sneaked' to 'snuck') and found that English continues to grow at a rate of 8,500 new words a year. However the growth rate is slowing, partly because the language is already so rich, the 'marginal utility' of new words is declining. Another discovery is that the death rates for words is rising, largely as a matter of homogenization as regional words disappear and spell-checking programs and vigilant copy editors choke off the chaotic variety of words much more quickly, in effect speeding up the natural selection of words. The authors also identified a universal 'tipping point' in the life cycle of new words: Roughly 30 to 50 years after their birth, words either enter the long-term lexicon or tumble off a cliff into disuse and go '23 skidoo' as children either accept or reject their parents' coinages."
Re:Scrabble (Score:5, Funny)
It's a show on BBC2.
Re:"Universal laws"? (Score:5, Funny)
This looks like really interesting and important research - perhaps even a tenth as important as these physicists think it is!
What physicists do when they are bored ... take away research from other fields
Just stop already (Score:5, Funny)
Librarian Discovers Dark Matter Under Carpet... (Score:3, Funny)
...Grand Unification Theory of Cosmology Proven.
Re:Physicists? (Score:5, Funny)
Why would physicists be studying this kind of thing?
When you graduate with a PhD in physics, you get three things:
The third means that you are obliged, at least once, to submit a paper about some other field to arxiv.org. Ideally, this paper should not cite any relevant research in the field - only other papers by physicists - and, for bonus points, should base its entire thesis a weak statistical correlation.
Gullible (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Universal laws"? (Score:3, Funny)
(As an aside: that page is the second hit for googling "google jobs" for some reason.)
Re:Just stop already (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like you should attend a class on Verbal Fatigonomics.
Elementary anthropology (Score:2, Funny)
So physicists have reinvented battleship curves. Congratulations! We couldn't have done it a century ago without you!
Re:I hate "snuck" (Score:5, Funny)
That stupid word always drived me crazy.
Yeeeaaaah!
Re:"Universal laws"? (Score:3, Funny)
All this reminds me of when a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were told of a man who is across the room from a woman and moves half the remaining distance to the woman every minute. The mathematician said, "The man will never reach the woman." The physicist said, "In twenty minutes the man will be within an atomic radius of the woman and can be said to have reached her." The engineer said, "No problem, in five minutes that guy will be close enough for all practical purposes."
Please adjust this joke to the sexual proclivities of your audience as needed.
Re:Scrabble (Score:4, Funny)
Now I don't want to be pidgin holed as one of those P-brains (or pee brains, even) who gets too obsessed over a little thing like spelling, when for all intensive purposes we can usually understand each other well enough, but sometimes you're words really due matter.
Aisle admit to some fussiness. I apparently have a deep-seeded need to correct verbal foe paws when I see them, ranging from stray apostrophe's to unnecessary quotes put around 'words' for emphasis, but as the mourning star shines, what really makes me cry grate crocodile tiers of frustration is the spelling error. Even when I'm not a steak-holder in the matter, such as someone else's conversation on a discussion bored (you really think they'd be more exciting), I still feel the kneed to make corrections. Old King Coal was a merry old sole, but apparently I'm a reel stickler for details.
Whether it's big causes like visualizing whirled peas or helping those starving euthanasia, down to the most miner house-holed conversations, proper communication is key. It *should* be as easy as pi, but four sum reason it's knot.
For example, recently Eye replied to an appalling posting which red, "your in this country, learn the language" with an offer to make the poster the first deportee, but my suggestion only earned an unappreciative "yore a jerk." Their may be a colonel of truth to that, but I still think it was the foolish poster who looked bad for making such a silly mistake. You simply can't expect someone to take you seriously while you're talking about a title wave, or a device that scans for finger prince, or most especially if you're trying to peek customer interest in a sneak peak of your product. Precise spelling gets a bad wrap at times, but you'll be mocked if you mangle the lyrics to Comma Chameleon, and calling someone a no-nothing will only cause readers to glance askance at the extent of your own knowledge (unless the principal of the double negative means you really intended to call him a "something-something," which may be fare game.)
In the same vain, if you try to take the reigns, be prepared for "your royal highness" jokes — far less likely to get any kings or queens than jokers and lumbar jacks. As the great barred once said, "Two bee, ore not too B." Or was that a line from The Malty's Falcon? I always get those too mixed up.
But that pails in comparison to the thyme my brother warned me to (and you'll have to pardon my French here) "look out for the big asshole" in the parking lot, and as I looked around for an improperly behaving pedestrian or vehicle, I ran through the big-ass pothole that he'd been trying to point out.
Now some may argue that the time spent trying to be precise is waisted if other people can figure it out anyway, but in my mind it's shear arrogance to save yourself the trouble of doing the thinking if it puts the burden on the other party. If you don't have your queue stick lined up with the Q ball, don't make it *my* fault when your intentions go awry. Even if you have the best can-dew, never-say-dye attitude, I refuse to let your accross-the-bored misspellings make a lyre of me.
Mostly it's the principal of the thing (have I used principal already? My apologies if the repetition wares on you), that if you have a capitol idea to share butt know-buddy is abel to understand it, then you mite ass whale not bother.
Re:Scrabble (Score:4, Funny)
Normally I oppose the death penalty but I think that for grammar errors, it would be too good for the culprit.
Re:Some Advice (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks, I always knew that my time on Slashdot was not a waste and that I was in fact visiting a true temple of knowledge!