The diffusion of language change in real time: Progressive and conservative individuals and the time depth of change

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Helena Raumolin-Brunberg ◽  
Heikki Mannila
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Time Model ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Structural Patterns ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Early English ◽  
Over Time

AbstractA major issue in the study of language change is the degree to which individual speakers participate in ongoing linguistic changes as these progress over time. In this study, we examine the hypothesis, suggested by research based on the apparent-time model, that in any given period most people are neither progressive nor conservative with regard to ongoing changes, but rather fall between these polarities. Our data come from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, which spans over 270 years. A computational model was developed to establish which language users were progressive and which conservative with respect to several ongoing changes that progressed in real time between the early 15th and late 17th centuries. The changes studied ranged from morpheme replacements to more abstract structural patterns. Our results indicate that the degree to which language users participated in changes in progress depended on the type of language change analyzed, the stage of development of the change, and the rate of diffusion of the process over time. The model also enabled the identification of groups of leaders of linguistic change in Tudor and Stuart England.

scholarly journals Monitoring 21st-Century Real-Time Language Change in Spanish Youth Speech

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
Linde Roels ◽  
Fien De Latte ◽  
Renata Enghels
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Real Time Data ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
Linguistic Phenomenon ◽  
Over Time

In recent decades, youth language has become one of the preferred research areas in sociolinguistics, not only because of its non-normative nature but mostly because it is recognized as a catalyst for language change. Since adolescents aspire to create and safeguard an in-group identity, they constantly generate innovative linguistic forms. However, few studies have empirically monitored the speed at which linguistic innovations are introduced into youth language. This study explores the speed and nature of recent language change within Spanish youth language by conducting a corpus analysis in real time. Data of the contemporary CORMA corpus (Corpus Oral de Madrid, compiled between 2016 and 2019) are contrasted with the highly comparable data of the COLAm corpus (Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid, compiled between 2003 and 2007). The study scrutinizes two typical phenomena of youth language, namely the use of intensifiers (e.g., super-, mazo) and vocatives (e.g., tío/tía, chaval/chavala). It is shown that changes occur at a more moderate speed than previously assumed and that the speed of change depends on the linguistic phenomenon under study. Additionally, the data suggest that more neutral forms remain quite stable over time, while the use of more expressive items shrinks or increases faster.

Language Change and Movement as Seen by Historical Linguistics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Nurse
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Language Boundaries ◽  
Over Time

The focus of this chapter is on how languages move and change over time and space. The perceptions of historical linguists have been shaped by what they were observing. During the flowering of comparative linguistics, from the late 19th into the 20th century, the dominant view was that in earlier times when people moved, their languages moved with them, often over long distances, sometimes fast, and that language change was largely internal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. We now recognize that in recent centuries and millennia, most movements of communities and individuals have been local and shorter. Constant contact between communities resulted in features flowing across language boundaries, especially in crowded and long-settled locations such as most of Central and West Africa. Although communities did mix and people did cross borders, it became clear that language and linguistic features could also move without communities moving.

Eternal Today

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Myllykoski ◽  
Anniina Rantakari
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Constitutive Relation ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
Time Study ◽  
Software Company ◽  
Present Experience ◽  
Managerial Strategy ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Strategy Making

This chapter focuses on temporality in managerial strategy making. It adopts an ‘in-time’ view to examine strategy making as the fluidity of the present experience and draws on a longitudinal, real-time study in a small Finnish software company. It shows five manifestations of ‘in-time’ processuality in strategy making, and identifies a temporality paradox that arises from the engagement of managers with two contradictory times: constructed linear ‘over time’ and experienced, becoming ‘in time’. These findings lead to the re-evaluation of the nature of intention in strategy making, and the authors elaborate the constitutive relation between time as ‘the passage of nature’ and human agency. Consequently, they argue that temporality should not be treated merely as an objective background or a subjective managerial orientation, but as a fundamental characteristic of processuality that defines the dynamics of strategy making.

Isoglosses and language change: Evidence of the rise and loss of isoglosses from a comparison of early Greek and early English

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-575
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Lavidas
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Considerable Distance ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Early English ◽  
Aspectual Verbs

Abstract We analyze the rise and loss of isoglosses in two Indo-European languages, early Greek and early English, which, however, show considerable distance between their structures in many other domains. We follow Keidan’s approach (2013), that has drawn the attention on the fact that the study of isoglosses (i.e., linguistic features common to two or more languages) is connected with common innovations of particular languages after the split into sub-groups of Indo-European: this type of approach aims at collecting isoglosses that appear across the branches of Indo-European. We examine the rise of the isogloss of labile verbs and the loss of the isogloss of the two classes of aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. Our study shows that the rise of labile verbs in both languages is related to the innovative use of intransitives in causative constructions. On the other hand, the innovations in voice morphology follow different directions in Greek and English and are unrelated to the rise of labile verbs. In contrast to labile verbs, which are still predominant for causative-anticausative constructions in both languages, the two classes of aspectual verbs are lost in the later stages of Greek but are predominant even in Present-day English. Again, a “prerequisite” change for the isogloss can be easily located in a structural ambiguity that is relevant for aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. However, another independent development, the changes in verbal complementation (the development of infinitival and participial complements) in Greek and English, determined the loss of this isogloss.

scholarly journals Comparative sociolinguistic perspectives on the rate of linguistic change

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Tanja Säily ◽  
Turo Vartiainen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Specific Topic ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

AbstractThis issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.

Physical Aggression Is Associated With More Effective Postdecisional Processing of Social Threat

2021 ◽  
pp. 216770262096629
Author(s):  
Grace M. Brennan ◽  
Arielle Baskin-Sommers
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Physical Aggression ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Angry Rumination ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Over Time

Physically aggressive individuals are more likely to decide that others are threatening. Yet no research has examined how physically aggressive individuals’ social decisions unfold in real time. Seventy-five incarcerated men completed a task in which they identified the emotions in faces displaying anger (i.e., threat) and happiness (i.e., nonthreat) at low, moderate, or high ambiguity. Participants then rated their confidence in their decisions either immediately or after a delay, and changes in confidence provided an index of postdecisional processing. Physical aggression was associated with stronger differentiation of threatening and nonthreatening faces under moderate ambiguity. Moreover, physical aggression was associated with steeper decreases in confidence over time following decisions that threatening faces were nonthreatening, indicating more extensive postdecisional processing. This pattern of postdecisional processing mediated the association between physical aggression and angry rumination. Findings suggest a role for postdecisional processing in the maintenance of threat-based social decisions in physical aggression.

scholarly journals Module to Support Real-Time Microscopic Imaging of Living Organisms on Ground-Based Microgravity Analogs

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3122
Author(s):  
Srujana Neelam ◽  
Audrey Lee ◽  
Michael A. Lane ◽  
Ceasar Udave ◽  
Howard G. Levine ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Simulated Microgravity ◽  
Image Acquisition ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
Moving Frames ◽  
Cell Functions ◽  
Microgravity Simulation ◽  
Division Cell ◽  
Over Time

Since opportunities for spaceflight experiments are scarce, ground-based microgravity simulation devices (MSDs) offer accessible and economical alternatives for gravitational biology studies. Among the MSDs, the random positioning machine (RPM) provides simulated microgravity conditions on the ground by randomizing rotating biological samples in two axes to distribute the Earth’s gravity vector in all directions over time. Real-time microscopy and image acquisition during microgravity simulation are of particular interest to enable the study of how basic cell functions, such as division, migration, and proliferation, progress under altered gravity conditions. However, these capabilities have been difficult to implement due to the constantly moving frames of the RPM as well as mechanical noise. Therefore, we developed an image acquisition module that can be mounted on an RPM to capture live images over time while the specimen is in the simulated microgravity (SMG) environment. This module integrates a digital microscope with a magnification range of 20× to 700×, a high-speed data transmission adaptor for the wireless streaming of time-lapse images, and a backlight illuminator to view the sample under brightfield and darkfield modes. With this module, we successfully demonstrated the real-time imaging of human cells cultured on an RPM in brightfield, lasting up to 80 h, and also visualized them in green fluorescent channel. This module was successful in monitoring cell morphology and in quantifying the rate of cell division, cell migration, and wound healing in SMG. It can be easily modified to study the response of other biological specimens to SMG.

Variation and third age: A sociolinguistic perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Schreier
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Change ◽  
National Council ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Third Age ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Style Shifting ◽  
Age Grading ◽  
Ethnic Group Membership

Abstract The correlation between external factors such as age, gender, ethnic group membership and language variation is one of the stalwarts of sociolinguistic theory. The repertoire of individual members of speaker groups, vis-à-vis community-wide variation, represents a somewhat slippery ground for developing and testing models of variation and change and has been researched with reference to accommodation (Bell 1984), style shifting (Rickford, John R. & MacKenzie Price. 2013. Girlz II women: Age-grading, language change and stylistic variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17. 143–179) and language change generally (Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change, vol. 2: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell). This paper presents and assesses some first quantitative evidence that non-mobile older speakers from Tristan da Cunha, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, who grew up in an utterly isolated speech community, vary and shift according to external interview parameters (interviewer, topic, place of interview). However, while they respond to the formality of the context, they display variation (both regarding speakers and variables) that is not in line with the constraints attested elsewhere. These findings are assessed with focus on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in third-age speakers (particularly style-shifting, Labov, William. 1964. Stages in the acquisition of Standard English. In Roger Shuy, Alva Davis & Robert Hogan (eds.), Social Dialects and Language Learning, 77–104. Champaign: National Council of Teachers of English) and across the life-span generally.

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