Language Change Research Group
The research group is currently undertaking two major research projects: the Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects and the Tweetolectology (Investigating the Diffusion of Morphosyntactic Innovations using Social Media) project. The former uses oral questionnaires administered to speakers of all age groups and social backgrounds to map current morphosyntactic variation in Welsh. In doing so, it investigates how linguistic innovations diffuse in geographic and social space and how formal syntax can account for the patterns of change and range of grammatical systems that are attested. The latter addresses the same theoretical questions, but adopts a significant methodological innovation, namely the use of large corpora of social media (Twitter) data in British English, Mainland Scandinavian and Welsh. The research unit will thus contribute to the network’s comparative dimension by looking at variation in another branch of Indo-European (Celtic). By examining variation and change in a minority language, it will contribute to our understanding of the effects of language contact and revitalization of dialect syntax. The group will also focus on investigating active processes of ongoing change (apparent-time variation) in addition to the modelling of static variation. Finally, it will contribute methodological expertise on the challenges and opportunities in the use of computer-mediated communication as a resource for investigating dialect syntax.