Dynamics of core of language vocabulary

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability and dynamics of core vocabulary across three centuries and six European languages using Google Books Ngram, revealing a high stability rate similar to the Swadesh list.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of core vocabulary change rates over three centuries across multiple languages using large diachronic corpora.

Findings

Core change rate is highly stable over three centuries.

Core words cover a significant portion of texts across periods.

Stability is comparable to the Swadesh list.

Abstract

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.