In Linguistics: Language Change
In linguistics, the logistic function can be used to model language change: an innovation that is at first marginal begins to spread more quickly with time, and then more slowly as it becomes more universally adopted.
Read more about this topic: Logistic Function
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or change:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it’s an example of freedom from religion.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)