Figure S8
found
| 10° dwelt
e dwelled 10 107 10°
throve/thriven thrived
Frequency 3
go = i=]
spilt
4.10 spilled
210° ff) it} 1
410° EFS SPilled
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 Year Fig. S8. Example of grammatical change. Irregular verbs are used as a model of grammatical evolution. For each verb, we plot the usage frequency of its irregular form in red (for instance, ‘found’), and the usage frequency of its regular past-tense form in blue (for instance, ‘finded’). Virtually all irregular verbs are found from time to time used in a regular form, but those used more often tend to be used in a regular way more rarely. This is illustrated in the top two rows with the frequently-used verb “find” and the less often encountered “dwell”. In the third row, the trajectory of “thrive” is one of many ways by
|”
which regularization occurs. The bottom two panels shows that the regularization of “spill” happened
earlier in the US than in the UK.
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017047