Dynamics of core of language vocabulary
This provides insights into linguistic evolution for researchers, but it is incremental as it applies existing methods to new data.
The study investigated the stability of core vocabulary change rates across six European languages over three centuries using the Google Books Ngram corpus, finding high stability analogous to the Swadesh list.
Studies of the overall structure of vocabulary and its dynamics became possible due to creation of diachronic text corpora, especially Google Books Ngram. This article discusses the question of core change rate and the degree to which the core words cover the texts. Different periods of the last three centuries and six main European languages presented in Google Books Ngram are compared. The main result is high stability of core change rate, which is analogous to stability of the Swadesh list.