During language evolution, rules emerge and exceptions decline. A quantitative study measures the rate at which a human language becomes more regular over time. Specifically, the regularization of English verbs over the last 1200 years was studied, and it was found that half-life of a verb scales as the square root of its frequency, meaning that irregular verbs that are 100 times as rare regularize ten times faster.
- Erez Lieberman
- Jean-Baptiste Michel
- Martin A. Nowak
