CEL 2014 - The Changing English Language: Psycholinguistic Perspectives

The Changing English Language: Psycholinguistic Perspectives
Marianne Hundt, University of Zurich
Sandra Mollin, University of Heidelberg
Simone Pfenninger, University of Zurich
Thematic outline
Language change as it proceeds from generation to generation through daily interaction of speakers may be shaped by language-internal, social and psycholinguistic factors. While the first two factors have been thoroughly researched in historical linguistics, the latter has not been systematically addressed, even though speculative recourse is com-monly made to psycholinguistic explanations. Recent handbooks of (English) historical linguistics do not include systematic discussions of psycholinguistic factors driving lan-guage change (with the exception of the sketch by Aitchison in Joseph & Janda eds. 2003).
The aim of the workshop is to address core issues of language change in English from both a historical-linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective, bringing leading experts from the two disciplines together in order to explore the potential (and limitations) of an interdisciplinary approach to language change. The proposed workshop is the first to provide a platform for the systematic interaction between psycholinguistics and histori-cal linguistics on the question of how language changes over time.
Each key psycholinguistic concept will be addressed from the psycholinguistic and the historical linguistic perspective. The psycholinguist will present the state of the art in psycholinguistic research on this concept and will develop a model of how this concept may be involved in language change. The historical linguist(s) will present one or two case studies in the history of the English language in which the psycholinguistic concept in question may be argued to have played a decisive role, making reference to the psy-cholinguistic discussion provided in the first paper.