Words that Have Made History, or Modeling the Dynamics of Linguistic Changes

Maciej Eder

Words that Have Made History,
or Modeling the Dynamics
of Linguistic Changes

Maciej Eder

Institute of Polish Language (Polish Academy of Sciences)

Digital Humanities 2018, Mexico City, 29 June 2018

Aim of the study

The dynamics of language change

What is responsible for a change?

Data and methods

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Procedure

Accuracy

Why does the change periodically accelerate?

Accuracy

Distinctive features

Distinctive features: the biggest variation

So, which words are they?

##  [1] "the"       "and"       "week"      "that"      "'s"       
##  [6] "last"      "is"        "be"        "of"        "it"       
## [11] "we"        "i"         "to"        "was"       "mr."      
## [16] "our"       "my"        "been"      "not"       "u.s."     
## [21] "you"       "new"       "upon"      "there"     "has"      
## [26] "says"      "war"       "york"      "this"      "n't"      
## [31] "will"      "s"         "which"     "for"       "had"      
## [36] "very"      "have"      "said"      "are"       "in"       
## [41] "city"      "made"      "me"        "a"         "president"
## [46] "her"       "us"        "she"       "his"       "by"       
## [51] "united"    "or"        "at"        "but"       "q!"       
## [56] "party"     "committee" "your"      "so"        "as"       
## [61] "street"    "today"     "men"       "would"     "with"     
## [66] "about"     "heart"     "do"        "any"       "'d"       
## [71] "out"       "all"       "if"        "great"     "army"     
## [76] "up"

Words that matter

Words that matter

Words that matter

Words that matter

Function words

Words cannot simply “disappear”

Personal pronouns (“social” words)

Conclusions

Thank you!

This research is part of project UMO-2013/11/B/HS2/02795, supported by Poland’s National Science Centre.