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It's Nonfiction Monday!

"Science is not a little thing, a narrow field: it encompasses or confronts all that ever was, is, or shall be, the whole bag of tricks, from a universe 13 billion light years across, to the subatomic world.

How curious then, that the science book remains a sub-genre, occupying a set of shelves somewhere in non-fiction, usually near the back of the shop; and how curious that it remains separate from literature, as if science writing was not the same as good writing; and as if facts about the world were somehow less thrilling than fictions about it. Novelists observe and describe. But so do naturalists. Poets celebrate, but so do physicists. Historians explain, but so do chemists."

--Tim Radford in his 2005 article in The Guardian,
in which he goes on to name ten science books
everyone should own.

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Okay, let's see a show of hands. How many folks think becoming a writer or studying English means "Woohoo! No more math!" Words are messy critters, after all, and language is too variable and unpredictable to quantify and slot into formulas. Literature is safe from mathematical reach, right?

Well, if it ever was, it certainly isn't anymore.

Mathematicians at Harvard University announced last week that they've figured out a mathematical formula for verbs---more particularly, a formula that will predict how verbs change over time. And those number crunchers in the math lab are sure pleased with their "striking and beautiful" results.

Here's the deal: "Just as genes and organisms undergo natural selection, words---specifically, irregular verbs that do not take an "-ed" ending in the past tense---are subject to powerful pressure to 'regularize'". . . in other words, take the "-ed" ending. After tracking irregular verbs through the centuries, the researchers discovered that infrequently used verbs are more likely to change than frequently used verbs. In fact, "a verb used 100 times less frequently will evolve 10 times as fast."

Now in the grand scheme of all things verbal, irregular verbs are pretty small potatoes (less than 3% of all verbs), but interestingly, all of the ten most common verbs (be, have, do, go, say, can, will, see, take, and get) are irregular. According to the math gurus, none of these verb faves will regularize any time soon. They're used so much, we can count on them staying irregular for thousands and thousands of years.

Oh, and once irregular verbs are gone, they're gone. There's no new supply. New verbs coming into the English language---"google", for example---are regular, right out of the starting gate.

In case you're curious. . . Of the 177 verbs that were irregular 1,200 years ago, a little more than half remain irregular today. Verbs that have regularized in recent centuries include: help, laugh, reach, walk, and work. Of the 15 verbs expected to regularize in the next 500 years, which one will likely be next? Wed.

True confessions time: I am such a word geek. And a word geek that likes math, at that.
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". . . publishing is not a science. For every rule you can create, there is an exception. As such, no matter how planned and calculated you may be, there is always a dimension of unpredictability that looms. . . .You can't "control" it all, but the possibilities are very exciting."
____________--Rosemary Stimola, literary agent
________________In an interview at Cynsations

Here's to exciting possibilities!
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Chinese takeout for supper last night after a busy day at Casa Bayrock.

The fortune cookie:

_____You have a charming way with
_____words and should write a book.

Gotta love it!
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