Studying Language Change in the 21st Century: Theory and Methodologies

The volume brings together contributions by scholars working in different theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language change and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and modern analytical tools and methodology; the integrative basis of all work included in the volume is the special focus on phenomena at the interface of semantics and syntax and the implications of corpus-based, quantitative analyses for researching diachrony.

The issues addressed in the 13 papers include the following: explanations of change in the interface of semantics and syntax; universal constraints and principles of language change (e.g., economy, reanalysis, analogy) and the possibility of predicting language change; constructional approaches to change and their relation to corpus-based research; language contact as an explanation of change and approaches to historical bilingualism and language contact, all on the basis of empirical corpus findings; the challenges of creating diachronic corpora and the question of how quantitative linguistics and diachronic corpora inform explanations of language change variation.