links for 2009-04-11

• How To Predict The Future Of The Past Tense
  In which some Harvard mathematicians conceive of linguistic development in terms of natural selection. "Just as genes and organisms undergo natural selection, words — specifically, irregular verbs that do not take an '-ed' ending in the past tense — are subject to powerful pressure to 'regularize' as the language develops." And they come up with an algorithm. A verb used a hundred times less frequently, they say, will evolve 10 times as fast – a squeezing, conforming effect. Result: all new verbs entering the English language (googled, facebooked, delicious'd) are universally regular.
  (tags: linguistics sciencedaily verbs english language)