Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Vejdemo S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4731055 | biostudies-literature | 2016
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words.
Vejdemo Susanne S Hörberg Thomas T
PloS one 20160128 1
The rate of lexical replacement estimates the diachronic stability of word forms on the basis of how frequently a proto-language word is replaced or retained in its daughter languages. Lexical replacement rate has been shown to be highly related to word class and word frequency. In this paper, we argue that content words and function words behave differently with respect to lexical replacement rate, and we show that semantic factors predict the lexical replacement rate of content words. For the ...[more]
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