Figure 3. Excursions in frequency and proportion of irregularity in the core vocabulary.

(A) Plot of against (frequency averaged across all the decades) for core roots. Points are color-coded according to their average across all the decades. Active roots are represented by larger points, patterning predominantly in the upper “cloud,” distinctly away from stable regular and irregular roots. Some active roots fall into the lower “cloud” (indicated by black circles), due to an effective net (i.e., fluctuates below 1 or above 0 between the first and last decade, but has the same value in the first and last decade). (B) Plot of the time evolution of for exemplars of irregularization (quit) and regularization (smell). (C) Excursion in irregularity proportion ( when negative) calculated as the difference in between the first and last decade plotted against for the 69 active roots with a non-zero between the first and last occurrences. A negative indicates regularization, a positive indicates irregularization. The decreasing trend with increasing average frequency corresponds to the behaviour of the “cloud” in (A). (D) Excursion in frequency ( when negative) against for all core roots. Red points represents binning of and , error bars are given for . The trend of proportional to is visible.