Get fulltext from our e-platform
Language Development
The lifespan perspective
Language Development: The lifespan perspective generates insights into the central issues of age-dependent language change, focusing especially on the middle and later stages of life. The contributors exploit contemporary and historical longitudinal data, adopting psycholinguistic, corpus linguistic and sociolinguistic approaches. Linguistic changes are discussed against the background of cognitive, somatic and social factors. Bringing the resulting contributions together, the volume aims to resume the discussion of contradictions between the models of change and constancy over an individual’s lifespan that have not been sufficiently resolved to date. The volume is intended to serve as an interdisciplinary reference resource for those conducting research on language development and the aging process and as a supplementary course book on language variability and change.
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society, 37] 2015. vii, 233 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 26 June 2015
Published online on 26 June 2015
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- List of abbreviations | pp. vii–viii
- Investigating the lifespan perspectiveAnnette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste | pp. 1–8
- Disassociating the effects of age from phonetic change: A longitudinal study of formant frequenciesUlrich Reubold and Jonathan Harrington | pp. 9–38
- Phonological variation in real time: Patterns of adult linguistic stability and changeDavid Bowie | pp. 39–58
- Language production in late lifeSusan Kemper | pp. 59–76
- Vocabulary and dementia in six novelistsIan Lancashire | pp. 77–108
- A sociolinguistic perspective on vocabulary richness in a seven-year comparison of older adultsAnnette Gerstenberg | pp. 109–128
- Age-related variation and language change in Early Modern EnglishTerttu Nevalainen | pp. 129–146
- Lifespan and linguistic awareness: The case of 18th-century Italian autobiographersLorenzo Tomasin | pp. 147–166
- Tired mind or tired hand? Linguistic changes in the private letters of a Baltic German noblemanAnja Voeste | pp. 167–188
- Kriegsausbruch, Kriegs Ausbruch, KriegsAusbruch: On the possible connection between linguistic variation and age, based on personal journals from 1892 to 1944Britt-Marie Schuster | pp. 189–230
- Index | pp. 231–233
Cited by (13)
Cited by 13 other publications
Rössler, Paul
Sanz-Sánchez, Israel
2024. Language acquisition across the lifespan in historical
sociolinguistics. In Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 14], ► pp. 2 ff.
Wood, Sidney
Bowie, David
Luo, Minxia, Mona Neysari, Gerold Schneider, Mike Martin, Burcu Demiray & Angela Gutchess
Neels, Jakob
Anthonissen, Lynn & Peter Petré
Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel
2019. Chapter 6. Virtual sociolinguistics. In Language Variation - European Perspectives VII [Studies in Language Variation, 22], ► pp. 104 ff.
Siebers, Lucia
2019. African American English in nineteenth-century Liberia. In Processes of Change [Studies in Language Variation, 21], ► pp. 139 ff.
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.