Verbs evolve linguistically different

Commonly used verbs are less likely to change

A verb that is used often will change verb slowly, whilst a verb that is used less frequently will change less. This is according to a Harvard University team lead by Martin Nowak. Nowak is not a linguist but rather a professor of mathematics and of biology at Harvard He studies evolutionary dynamics. He applied evolutionary mathematical models to words. His Harvard team looked at 177 Old English irregular verbs and traced their develop to today.

Nowak found that verbs that are irregular change to regular verbs with “ed” endings 10 times faster than irregular verbs that are used more often. This is linguistic evolution and mathematics. If you think about it it makes sense. However, what is interesting is Nowak studied this phenomenom with empirical data.
These ancient irregular verbs that do not change are fossils or rather they represent long abandon rules of how verbs were conjugated in the past.

Modern verbs

All modern verbs are regular. The English language is becoming more simple and clear. For example “to google” is a classic example. You say ‘I googled something last night’.

Tags: evolution, linguistic, verbs