The Changing English Language: Psycholinguistic Perspectives

Abstract

Bringing together experts from historical linguistics and psychology, this volume addresses core factors and processes in language change, exploring the potential (and limitations) of such an interdisciplinary approach. Easily accessible chapters by psycholinguists present cuttingedge research on frequency, salience, chunking, priming, analogy, ambiguity and acquisition, and develop models of how these may be involved in language change. Each chapter is complemented with one or more case studies in the history of English in which the psycholinguistic factor in question may be argued to have played a decisive role. Thus, for the first time, a single volume provides a platform for an integrated exchange between psycholinguistics and historical linguistics on the question of how language changes over time.