Language variation and change
Exploring linguistic variation and change, with a particular focus on quantitative models
Our research interests cover many areas of linguistics, including phonetics, historical phonology, historical syntax, syntactic variation, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics.
The group is inherently interdisciplinary and invites membership from any interested researchers in or around the University of Edinburgh community. Our members are interested in patterns of variability at all levels of linguistic structure. We share an interest in both synchronic and diachronic variation, with the goal of developing empirical models of variation and change.
People
Staff who work in this area include:
 |
Research interests |
| Claire Cowie |
World Englishes; language contact; morphological productivity; pragmatics |
| Lauren Hall-Lew | Sociolinguistics; sociophonetics; phonetic methods; English variation and change; language and ethnicity; language and tourism |
| Caroline Heycock | Syntactic variation and change |
| Gabrielle Hodge | Research relating to deaf people, deaf communities, sign languages and communication |
| Willem Hollmann | Cognitive-typological linguistics; cognitive sociolinguistics; language change; history of English; dialect grammar; forensic linguistics |
| Patrick Honeybone | Historical phonology; phonological theory; northern Englishes |
| Christian Ilbury | Youth language; language, gender and sexuality; ethnography; digital communication |
| Pavel Iosad | Theoretical phonology; phonological interfaces; historical phonology; Celtic languages; Germanic languages |
| Warren Maguire | Dialectology; varieties of English and Scots; phonetic and phonological variation and change |
| Mits Ota | First and second language acquisition; phonology |
| Antonella Sorace | Language development in bilinguals; bilingualism and general cognition; gradience at the lexicon-syntax interface |
| Graeme Trousdale | Historical linguistics; language variation and change |
| Alice Turk | Speech production, speech perception, prosodic structure, timing |
Postgraduate study
PhD and MSc by Research programmes
For more information about postgraduate study in language variation and change, contact Dr Lauren Hall-Lew.
Meetings
Meetings will be hybrid this year. Please check the LEL events page for location information. For more information about this year's meetings, contact Lauren Hall-Lew or Christian Ilbury or visit the research seminar event pages.
Language variation and change seminars