LSA.237 | The Time Course of Language Change: A Corpus-based Perspective

Anthony Kroch
TR 8:15-9:55
location: 56-114
course web site: http://lsa.dlp.mit.edu/Class/237

This course applies the population-based models of language change that have been developed over the past several years to explain the time course of language change, as revealed in the study of electronic historical corpora that have recently become available. Emphasis will be placed on statistical and dynamical systems methods for characterizing the diffusion of grammatical variants through a population of texts over time. The use of non-linear regression techniques for estimating rates of change and of non-linear dynamics for modeling the evolution of populations will be introduced at an elementary level.