The Evolution of Verbs

Verbs evolve much in the same fashion as DNA.

For decades, scientists have realised that languages evolve in strikingly similar ways to genes and living things. Their words and grammars change and mutate over time, and new versions slowly rise to dominance while other face extinction.


In this evolutionary analogy, old texts like the Canterbury Tales are the English language’s version of the fossil record. They preserve the existence of words that used to be commonplace before they lost a linguistic Darwinian conflict with other, more popular forms.

The rest of this very interesting article is here.

The Writer's Palette

AN*NO*TA*TION blog has a really interesting idea to keep yourself motivated and/or inspired when you're writing. She calls it a "writer's palette" and I think it's a great idea.

Shelfari

Shelfari makes it easy to see what your friends are reading, what others with similar tastes have enjoyed, and even get and give book recommendations.

And it's free.

It's a lot like Librarything.com's method which I use on this blog. I'm not sure which is better than the other, try both and see :)