![]() ![]() The coevolutionary nature of language requires analysis both at the macro and micro scale. Hence, we begin this paper with two questions: (i) Do languages exhibit dynamical patterns? (ii) Do individual words exhibit dynamical patterns? However, language is a fundamentally dynamic complex system, consisting of heterogenous entities at the level of the units (words) and the interacting users (us). These statistical laws are based on static snapshots of written language using empirical data aggregated over relatively small time periods and comprised of relatively small corpora ranging in size from individual texts 1, 2 to relatively small collections of topical texts 3, 4. Statistical laws describing the properties of word use, such as Zipf 's law 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Heaps' law 7, 8, have been thoroughly tested and modeled. We quantify cultural memory by analyzing the long-term correlations in the use of individual words using detrended fluctuation analysis. ![]() Pronounced changes in the dynamics of language during periods of war shows that word correlations, occurring across time and between words, are largely influenced by coevolutionary social, technological and political factors. For new words, we observe a peak in the growth-rate fluctuations around 40 years after introduction, consistent with the typical entry time into standard dictionaries and the human generational timescale. A significantly decreasing (increasing) trend in the birth (death) rate of words indicates a recent shift in the selection laws governing word use. We report language independent patterns useful as benchmarks for theoretical models of language evolution. We analyze the dynamic properties of 10 7 words recorded in English, Spanish and Hebrew over the period 1800–2008 in order to gain insight into the coevolution of language and culture. ![]()
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