Echtzeitanalyse von sprachlichen Veränderungen über die Lebensspanne

• Antragstellerin: Professorin Isabelle Buchstaller, Ph.D.
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Experimentelle Linguistik, Typologie, Außereuropäische Sprachen
• Förderung: Förderung seit 2019
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 418602718

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The relative stability in linguistic abilities across the adult life-span is one of the most fiercely contested issues in linguistic research. To date, most models of linguistic behaviour rely on some version of the critical period hypothesis, which postulates that the speech patterns of the individual are largely fixed by early adulthood. This is in spite of the fact that panel research has accrued a growing body of evidence that adults’ linguistic habits are more labile than we would expect if a strict interpretation of the critical age was applicable. But the status of this evidence is contested and has not found its way into formal theories of language change. What is notably lacking are (i) consolidated empirical data-sets that allow us to investigate ongoing linguistic malleability across the life-span of the individual as well as (ii) an informed dialogue about the dynamic relationship between language abilities and aging across the life of the individual and thus about the very basic principles underlying language change. The LaVaLi project set out to fill these gaps by collecting and mining a unique, large-scale data-base which documents changes at all levels of linguistic structure over the entire adult life-span. The first aim was therefore to collate the largest and most representative study of language change across the life of the individual. The second aim was to use this dynamic data-base to push forward our understanding of the limits and the determinants of linguistic malleability. The ground-breaking findings generated by this project were used to systematically examine the relative (in)stability of speakers’ grammar across the entire post-adolescent life-span. Indeed, the cutting edge nature of these data allowed us to inform interdisciplinary discussions about the nature of the critical period, including the consequences of ongoing linguistic malleability for our models of speaker-internal and community grammar. The larger objective of this project was thus to open new horizons about the relationship between speaker-internal grammar and aging, and to advance our understanding of the very basic principles underlying language change. Overall, the project set out to explore, for the first time, intra-speaker (in)stability across the entire post-adolescent life-span. This has allowed us to provide important impulses for bridging a key theoretical schism in the language sciences; the locus and the mechanisms of language change.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Introduction. Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan, 1-14. Routledge.
  Buchstaller, Isabelle & Beaman, Karen V.
  
• Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan. Routledge.
  Beaman, Karen V. & Buchstaller, Isabelle
  
• “Exploring the effect of linguistic architecture and heuristic method in panel analysis”. Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan. 185-208. Routledge.
  Beaman, Karen V. & Buchstaller, Isabelle
  
• Exploring age-related changes in the realisation of (t). English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English, 43(3), 297-329.
  Buchstaller, Isabelle; Mearns, Adam; Auer, Anja & Krause-Lerche, Anne
  
• Variation and change in the sociophonetic variable ing in format ties. Interactional Linguistics, 2(2), 137-164.
  Eiswirth, Mirjam Elisabeth & Bergmann, Felix
  
• “Towards an empirically-based model of age-graded behaviour: Explor(ing) linguistic malleability across the entire adult lifespan”. University of Philadelphia Working Papers in Linguistics, invited publication,
  Mechler, Johanna, James Grama, Mirjam Eiswirth, Lea Bauernfeind & Isabelle Buchstaller
  
• Post-educator relaxation in the U-shaped curve: Evidence from a panel study of Tyneside (ing). Language Variation and Change, 35(3), 325-350.
  Grama, James; Mechler, Johanna; Bauernfeind, Lea; Eiswirth, Mirjam E. & Buchstaller, Isabelle
  
• “Change across the lifespan in GOAT: Evidence from a panel study of Tyneside English”. In Radek Skarnitzl and Jan Volín (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Science, paper ID 530. Guarant International, ISBN: 8090811426..
  Bauernfeind, Lea, Carina Ahrens & James Grama
  
• “Tracking creak from early to late adulthood: A panel study from the North East of England”. In Radek Skarnitzl and Jan Volín (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Science, paper ID 167. Guarant International, ISBN: 8090811426.
  Grama, James, Isabelle Buchstaller & Mirjam Eiswirth
  
• Connecting the Individual and the Community in Sociolinguistic Panel Research. Routledge.
  Buchstaller, Isabelle & Beaman, Karen V.
  
• Learning to be (un)hip in panel data. Diachronica, 42(5), 555-593.
  Moelders, Anne-Marie & Buchstaller, Isabelle
  
• Navigating the vernacular across the lifespan: a panel study of the phonetic realisation of the first-person singular possessive. English Language and Linguistics, 29(1), 132-158.
  MOELDERS, ANNE-MARIE