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Research Clusters

Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Mechanisms of Language Change Research Area

First page of the early Middle English Peterborough Chronicle

The Mechanisms of Language Change research area is a group of staff and graduate students interested in all areas of language variation and change. It brings together not only staff within the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, but also from the wider Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

Much of the work by members of the area is characterised by either the creation and exploitation of corpora or by detailed philological work. The cluster's research activities are focused around three main themes which highlight some of the research strengths of its members:

  • Historical morphology and syntax
  • Language contact
  • Standardization and prescriptivism