Project description
How social and historical factors influence language structure
The theory of sociolinguistic typology developed by Peter Trudgill, a sociolinguist and an authority on dialects, suggests that simplicity and complexity in languages are closely related to social and historical conditions. In addition, adult second language acquisition leads to simplification. The EU-funded STARFISH project will build on this theory and establish a new theory of variation and change in syntactic complexity. Based on Trudgill’s theory, the project will define the syntactic traits that are receptive to variation under such situations. It will use a wide range of approaches from second language acquisition and syntax to computational models and historical corpus linguistics to address significant questions posed by the theory. The goal of the project is a new synthesis of historical sociolinguistics and syntactic theory.
Objective
"The aim of this project is to develop and test a new theory of variation and change in syntactic complexity, building on Trudgill’s (2011) theory of sociolinguistic typology and on the general architectural assumptions of Minimalist syntax. Trudgill (2011) makes the case that the distribution of simplicity and complexity across the world’s languages is related to the historical circumstances involved, with intense short-term contact involving extensive adult second language acquisition leading to simplification. This project will establish which syntactic features are ""responsive"" - that is, are susceptible to change under such circumstances. In the process, the project will bring together theories of second-language acquisition, syntax, computational modelling, and historical corpus linguistics to submit Trudgill's sociolinguistic-typological hypothesis to its most rigorous empirical test to date, in the domain of syntactic change. Crucial questions, such as the proportion of L2 acquirers and population structure necessary for simplification, will be teased out and addressed using computational modelling. We will look for responsive features in the domains of negation, Case, and subject expression, using the new generation of parsed historical corpora containing dated and localized texts at a high temporal and geographical resolution (e.g. the Corpus of Historical Low German currently in development), and put our theory and model to the test in these domains. The impact of the project will be to establish a new synthesis of historical sociolinguistics and syntactic theory that makes developments in each accountable to the other."
Fields of science
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
78464 Konstanz
Germany