Human languages are known to have grown and changed considerably over the course of history, often reflecting technological, cultural, and societal shifts. Studying the evolution of languages can thus offer valuable insight into how human societies and cultures have transformed over time.
    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzM
      11·
      4 days ago

      I had to dig quite a bit into the paper to find it:

      English and up to 21 other languages (Bengali, Catalan, Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Chinese)

      Frankly that’s poor sampling — 18/22 of the languages are Indo-European and/or spoken mostly in Europe.

  • Yliaster@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 days ago

    If only they expanded on what those patterns tend to actually look like (besides merely mentioning that popular words are found with other popular words) in a way that could be used to inform language learning