Figure 1.

Re-drawn from Pagel [1]. Statistically estimated rates of lexical replacement for 110 words in the Swadesh list in the Indo-European languages (from [6]) correlated with rank-ordering of subjectively assessed rates of change for the same words in a worldwide sample of 14 language families [11]. The correlation r = 0.65. The language families include Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Altaic, Austronesian, Australian, Khoisan, North Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Kartvelian, Afroasiatic, Tai, Uralic and Yenisan.