Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives from Panel Studies

This volume brings together research on panel studies with the aim of providing a coherent empirical and theoretical knowledge-base for examining the impact of maturation and lifespan-specific effects on linguistic malleability in the post-adolescent speaker. Building on the work of Wagner and Buchstaller (2018), the present collection offers a critical examination of the theoretical implications of panel research across a range of geographic regions and time periods. The volume seeks to offer a way forward in the debates circling about the phenomenon of later-life language change, drawing on contributions from a variety of linguistic disciplines to examine critical topics such as the effect of linguistic architecture, the roles of mobility and identity construction, and the impact of frequency effects. Taken together, this edited collection both informs and pushes forward key questions on the nature of lifespan change, making this key reading for students and researchers in cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Panel studies of language variation and change: Theoretical and methodological implications Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen V. Beaman PART I: REVELATIONS FROM PAST TREND AND PANEL STUDIES Chapter 1. The beginnings of panel research: Individual language variation, change and stability in Eskilstuna Eva Sundgren, Isabelle Buchstaller, and Karen V. Beaman Chapter 2. Alignment of individuals with community trends: Subjects from the Portuguese Maria da Conceição de Paiva, Maria Eugênia L. Duarte, and Gregory R. Guy Chapter 3. Stylistic Variation in Panel Studies of Language Change: Challenge and Opportunity John R. Rickford PART II: INSIGHTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF INTRA-SPEAKER (IN)STABILITY Chapter 4. Individual and group trajectories across adulthood in a sample of Utah English speakers David Bowie Chapter 5. Accent reversion in older adults: evidence from the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts Ulrich Reubold and Jonathan Harrington PART III: A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST: PANEL RESEARCH FROM ARCHIVAL MATERIAL Chapter 6. Exploiting convention: Lifespan change and generational incrementation in the development of cleft constructions William Standing and Peter Petré Chapter 7. Corpus-based lifespan change in Late Middle English Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy PART IV: NEW METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR LIFESPAN STUDIES Chapter 8. Exploring the effect of linguistic architecture and heuristic method in panel analysis Isabelle Buchstaller, Anne Krause-Lerche and Johanna Mechler Chapter 9. Loss of historical phonetic contrast across the lifespan: Articulatory, lexical, and social effects on sound change in Swabian Karen V. Beaman and Fabian Tomaschek Chapter 10. Deconfounding the effects of competition and attrition on dialect across the lifespan: A panel study of Swabian R. Harald Baayen, Karen V. Beaman, and Michael Ramscar PART V: FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR PANEL RESERACH Chapter 11. What’s the point of panel studies? Suzanne Evans Wagner Index

Karen V. Beaman received her Ph.D in sociolinguistics at Queen Mary, University of London and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Her research interests concern language variation, coherence and change, with particular focus on how factors of identity, mobility and social networks drive or inhibit change. Isabelle Buchstaller is professor of English Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research interests include language variation and change across time. She is the author of Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications (2014) and has co-edited four volumes, most recently, panel research in language variation and change (with Suzanne Evans Wagner).