BRYAN CAPLAN
May 7, 2013
Keynesian Bets: What's Out There
May 6, 2013
Keynesian Bets Bleg
May 6, 2013
The Pyramid of Macroeconomic Insight and Virtue
May 2, 2013
A Natalist Provision
May 1, 2013
I Was a Teenage Misanthrope
DAVID HENDERSON
May 5, 2013
John Thacker on Vaccinations and the Sequester
May 3, 2013
Chef Rudy's Virtues Project
May 2, 2013
My take on Reinhart and Rogoff
May 1, 2013
Medicare Kills a Program
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one of my favorite books of all time.
re: linguistic innovation, i thought the spread of literacy resulted in the slowing down of linguistic evolution and change? so purely oral languages evolve and diversify much faster.
This sounds like a job for Language Log!
Broadly speaking, it's very hard to do anything useful with lexeme counts. For one thing, an existing lexeme can acquire a new meaning: the word "bank" is attested in written English since 1200, but only acquires the meaning "a money-dealer's shop" in 1567 (according to the Oxford English Dictionary).
Whether anyone has done it -- whether it's even meaningful to try -- it would be interesting to see a plot of lexeme count vs. GDP.
Razib:
A counterexample: the Pirahã have no written language, and a small lexicon; while English has had a written form for hundreds of years, yet has changed substantially.
Ray Kurzweil's Singularity book has dozens of charts showing hockey sticks, not just for technology invention, but also technology adoption. iPods have been adopted faster than VCR's which were faster than TV's which were faster than telephones.
Kurzweil's point is that technology is accelerating all kinds of change, including social and linguistic.
isn't using the Pirahã as one half of a dyad render the observation irrelevant for generalization? but you might right on the general point, i'm passing along muddled recollections.
Yes, it's a good book. The subject matter tends to be economics-without-money: e.g., how many calories can be generated per acre from a given terrain/topography combination.