Quantifying the Evolutionary Dynamics of Language

This page contains supplemental materials for the paper titled "Quantifying the Evolutionary Dynamics of Language", published in Nature 449, 713-716 (11 October 2007) You can find here the table of all the irregular verbs that we annotated based on these references. You can find there the python source code that we used to analyze this data and describe how irregular verbs become regular with the passing of time.

The irregular verbs (download) 

We thank Steven Pinker (Harvard) for having provided us with the list of irregular verbs in Modern English. A verb is annotated as irregular (1) in Middle or Old English if it appears in one of our sources, and the corresponding reference is shown in the last two columns of this table. The notation "N" means that this verb was not found in any of our sources: it does not necessarily mean that this verb was regular in Middle or Old English. Only those verbs that were found in one of the Old English sources can be used to probe the evolutionary dynamics of irregular verbs.

Python Source Code (download)

References

1. Baugh, A. C., & Cable, T. A History of the English Language (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2002).
2. Bosworth, J. The Elements of Anglo-Saxon Grammar (Harding, London, 1823).
3. Emerson, O. F A Middle English Reader (MacMillan, London, 1909).
4. Harper, D. Online Etymology Dictionary (February, 2007) (http://www.etymonline.com).
5. Klipstein, L. A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language (Putnam, New York, 1848).
6. Mitchell, B., & Robinson F. C., A Guide to Old English (Blackwell, Cambridge, 2001).
7. Mosse, F. A Handbook of Middle English (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1952).
8. Smith, J. Essentials of Early English (Routledge, London, 1999).
9. Sweet, H. An Anglo-Saxon Primer (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1887).
10. Wright, J. An Elementary Middle English Grammar (Oxford University Press, London, 1923).
11. Wright, J., &Wright, E. M. Old English Grammar (Oxford University Press, London, 1925).