LING 204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Longitudinal Study, Language Change, Time Point
Document Summary
Change over time is reflected in variation at any single time point, but not all variation is part of change because some variation is stable, meaning that it sticks around for centuries. : age grading- there are stable old people and. Young people ways of talking (when today"s young people get old they"ll adopt old people ways). These changes across the lifespan could be due to entering or leaving the workforce, and adolescent love of novelty/rebellion, etc. Apparent time hypothesis- people born in 1930 reflect a 1930s way of talking, people born in 1990 reflect a 1990s way (obviously this assumes that the way we speak stays more or less the same throughout our lives). Comparing generations lets us see change as it happens. This over turns earlier linguists" assumptions that we could only study change after the fact. Studying the mechanics of change lets us understand principles underlying language change more generally.
