1887
Volume 2, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2589-1588
  • E-ISSN: 2589-1596
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Abstract

Abstract

An evolutionary approach to historical linguistics can be enlightening when not only the mechanisms, but also the statistical methods are considered from neighboring disciplines. In this short paper, we apply survival analysis to investigate what factors determine the lifespan of words. Our case study is on post-classical Greek from the 4th century to the beginning of the 8th century . We find that lower frequency and phonetically longer lexemes suffer earlier deaths. Furthermore, verbs turn out to have higher survival rates than adjectives and nouns.

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/content/journals/10.1075/elt.00019.vel
2021-01-15
2024-10-13
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