Invariants in Language Change
Project leader: Gertjan Postma
Research staff: Ben Hermans
Finance: Meertens Institute
Short description:
As the world changes, some characteristics stay unchanged. These are called invariants. For instance, the total energy of a falling ball stays constant (Newton's law). In language change, the weight of a syllable stays constant. This means that a vowel is lengthened if a consonant drops out. This project is a quest to linguistic invariants.