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.