Language variation and language change

A language is not a monolithic entity, but exhibits regional and social variation at different linguistic levels. Synchronous variability, which is based on both internal and external factors, causes major and minor diachronic shifts, which can ultimately lead to language change. Linguistic variation and language change can be viewed from a language-internal (phonological change, grammaticalisation) and sociolinguistic perspective. The sociolinguistic perspective includes regional (dialectal) variation, as well as social conditions (age, gender, social class, prestige, ethnicity, social network, community of practice) and the influence of language contact in bi- or multilingual settings.

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©PHAISITSAWAN - stock.adobe.com

The following linguists work in the field of language variation and language change:

Svitlana Antonyuk (Department of Psychology):

contact-related language change

Zuzana Bodnárová (Research Area Plurilingualism):

  • Language contact Romani-Hungarian
  • Para-Romani varieties

Jennifer Brunner (Department of Linguistics):

  • Language contact/multilingualism/language change in the West Highlands Kivu languages in Rwanda, Burundi and western Tanzania with different contact languages (English, French, Swahili)
  • ATAM in the languages of the Comoros

Oleksandra Damonte-Matveienko (Department of Linguistics):

  • Language Contact and Language Change (Ukrainian)

Dina El Zarka (Department of Linguistics):

  • Language contact Arabic/Persian and language change

Johanna Fanta-Jende (Department of German Studies):

  • Variation and Change of German in Austria

Sabine Heinemann (Department of Romance Studies):

  • diachronic verbal morphology
  • diatopic variation (especially Italo-Romance)
  • language contact

Martin Hummel (Department of Romance Studies):

  • Comparative study of dialects in Romance languages
  • Adverbs in the Latin-Romance transition
  • Diachronic reconstruction

Gunther Kaltenböck (Department of English Studies):

  • Emergence of discourse markers and pragmatic functions (grammaticalisation, pragmaticalisation, cooptation)
  • information packaging constructions

Daphne Reitinger-Zemann (Research Area Plurilingualism):

  • Language contact Romani-German

Johann Ulrich Reubold (Department of English Studies):

  • Sound change

Daria Seres (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Grammaticalisation
  • bare and non-bare NPs

Elisabeth Scherr (Department of German Studies): 

  • Vertical and horizontal variation in standard spoken German
  • Historical and contemporary phenomena of language change (focus: grammar)

Marko Simonovic (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Microvariation
  • Language change in small and minority languages
  • Language contact

Jelena Stojkovic (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Microvariation
  • factorial typology
  • Contact between Slavic and non-Slavic languages

Elnora ten Wolde (Department of English Studies):

  • Changes in the Nominal Phrase
  • historical development of modifiers
  • Creation of subjunctions

Philipp Trojan (Department of English Studies): 

  • Variation in the order of modifiers in the noun phrase

Joeri Vinke (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Microvariation
  • Dutch
  • Heritage languages
  • Differential object marking in Contact

Anna Volodina (Department of German Studies):

  • Diachronic development of referential zero pronouns
  • Grammaticalisation tendencies in spoken German

Jelena Živojinović (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Language contact
  • language change
  • Grammaticalisation
  • Diachrony of non-finite verb forms