FOR 5157:  Structuring the input in language processing, acquisition and change (SILPAC)

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437487447

SILPAC aims at creating a structure of interdisciplinary linguistic research in which researchers specialised in the two fields of historical linguistics (H) and psycholinguistics (P) closely collaborate with the goal of providing an empirically and theoretically well-grounded explanation of the links between language processing, acquisition and change, informed by mathematical modelling (M). We assume that changes in language processing in the individual, which are consequences of changes in the structure of the input, have a potential for lasting change via intergenerational transmission in acquisition. Hence, research in SILPAC is anchored in the structure of the input and sees psycholinguistics as the ‘missing link’ in theories of language change. SILPAC is premissed on the working hypothesis that the processes and mechanisms of change at the individual level and at the speech community level are fundamentally similar or even identical. From this assumption, two approaches to the combined study of change and processing follow. First, in the individual projects historical linguists and psycholinguists study change with complementary methods, working with historical texts and lab-based experiments, respectively. Second, in project P4 and the Project Bridges (PB), historical linguists and psycholinguists study change using comparable methods, applying, e.g. priming and adaptation as mechanisms of learning and change to the same phenomena in historical texts and in experiments. Both disciplines will profit from this intensive collaboration: cognitive factors and mechanisms that have been used in previous research in historical linguistics will gain a sound psychological basis. Experimental findings that point to changes in the individual are seen as the seedbed for historical change. Psycholinguists will develop models which help explain diachronic change.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Bilingual syntactic adaptation and the mechanisms of contact-induced language change (Applicant Hopp, Holger )
• Change and acquisition of verbal structures (Applicant Stein, Achim )
• Changing the structure of the input in contact: verbal prefixes and verb particle combinations (Applicant Trips, Carola )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Trips, Carola )
• Cross-linguistic influence in structures at the syntax-discourse interface as a window into grammatical change (Applicant Allen, Shanley )
• Lexical change in motion: Motion verbs and motion lexicalization from medieval to modern Romance (Applicant Rainsford, Thomas )
• Modelling lexical diffusion in syntax: non-finite complementation in Modern English (Applicant Walkden, George )
• Priming in contact-setting bilinguals and monolinguals as a driver of language change (Applicant Engemann, Helen )
• Structural priming and language change in experiments, historical corpora, and translation: Towards a psycholinguistically informed approach to historical corpus analysis (Applicant Jacob, Gunnar )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Carola Trips