Tracing language variation and change across the life span (LaVaLi)

• Applicant: Professorin Isabelle Buchstaller, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418602718

Whereas age-related differences in human behaviour are central to developmental fields of research, age-related changes in the grammar of the individual speaker are still largely overlooked and ignored. The main reason can be found in a core schism within the language sciences. Formal schools of linguistics tend to situate changes in internal grammar uniquely before critical age. Usage-based strands of linguistics, on the other hand, take life-span change for granted as the consequence of experience-based routinization and re-organization. To date, little research has explored the theoretical implications of episodic experience across the adult life-span. Consequently, we lack a coherent model of the locus and the mechanisms of post-adolescent language change. What is needed is a constructive discussion about the ways in which researchers in the language sciences can work together to push forward our understanding of the complex mechanisms - including the determinants, the range and the limits - of linguistic malleability across the whole adult life-span. To this aim, the LaVaLi project proposes to (i) systematically explore language variation and change within the individual speaker across a panel sample of speakers ages 18-65, (ii) use this knowledge-base in order to explore how intra-speaker lability articulates with the community grammar, and to (iii) assess the consequences of post-adolescent malleability for our models of language change. The first aim is met by collating a unique dynamic data-base which allows the investigation of linguistic (in)stability over the entire adult life-course. The life-span perspective on (in)stability in adult grammars offers a much richer context for the empirical description of changes in linguistic abilities than the stable states usually studied in linguistics and cognitive psychology. The LaVaLi project addresses the second aim by applying cutting-edge statistical techniques to explore the contingent nature of intra-speaker malleability at different levels of linguistic architecture. The overall aim of the project is thus to evaluate and present for discussion unique empirical data of the conditions that give rise to and/or inhibit linguistic changes within the post-adolescent speaker in terms of mechanisms that are relevant to formal as well as functional paradigms. Converging these perspectives on intra-speaker stability is beneficial since the investigation of post-adolescent malleability promises to significantly advance our understanding of the role of cognitive effects, personality and life experiences in shaping individual patterns of behaviour. The overall aim of the LaVaLi project is thus to generate a coherent knowledge-base that can be used across the linguistic and cognitive disciplines to inform the basic ontological question of what constitutes language change and thus to formulate models of the grammar of the individual which take into account the effects of experience/maturation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants