Markov Models for Multi-state Language Change
Freek Van de Velde, Isabeau De Smet
Abstract
Historical linguistics has witnessed an upsurge in quantitative corpus studies. The bulk of these studies involve the use of regression modelling. We point out a number of potential problems with this approach, and offer an alternative. For a multi-state language change, we propose a Markov model in continuous time. The major advantage of this technique, which has been used in medical contexts, is that it is especially geared towards dealing with time as a variable of interest, while it still allows one to look at the effect of several covariates. In this proof-of-concept article, we look at morphological shifts in preterites in Dutch, from 800ad to 2000ad (n = 14,314). This is a well-researched field, allowing us to investigate the performance of the multi-state Markov model.