Open AccessEvolution of language: An empirical study at eBay Big Data Lab
Author(s) -
David Bodoff,
Ron Bekkerman,
Julie Dai
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0189107
Subject(s) - object (grammar) , computer science , empirical research , big data , subject (documents) , scale (ratio) , word (group theory) , data science , artificial intelligence , natural language processing , world wide web , linguistics , mathematics , statistics , data mining , geography , philosophy , cartography
The evolutionary theory of language predicts that a language will tend towards fewer synonyms for a given object. We subject this and related predictions to empirical tests, using data from the eBay Big Data Lab which let us access all records of the words used by eBay vendors in their item titles, and by consumers in their searches. We find support for the predictions of the evolutionary theory of language. In particular, the mapping from object to words sharpens over time on both sides of the market, i.e. among consumers and among vendors. In addition, the word mappings used on the two sides of the market become more similar over time. Our research contributes to the literature on language evolution by reporting results of a truly unique large-scale empirical study.