Key Objective

The objective of this Research Unit is to investigate the interplay between linguistic variability and stability through the lens of lectal coherence.

Lectal Coherence

Lectal coherence refers to the extent to which linguistic variants – across all levels of the linguistic architecture – systematically co-occur and co-vary within and across individual speakers.

Research Focus

This project seeks to clarify the dynamic balance between lectal coherence, linguistic variability, and language change: while the former is essential for structural integrity and social orientation, the latter two enable adaptation and differentiation. To this end, a group of researchers from diverse disciplines and universities, specialising in various fields of linguistics, have collaborated to address this issue. The researchers involved in this project hail from a diverse range of academic backgrounds, including but not limited to the fields of computational linguistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence research, quantitative linguistics, phonetics and speech processing, psycholinguistics, contact linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

TEAM

Collaboration with several prestigious academic institutions, namely LMU Munich, University of Marburg,
University of Tübingen, University of Bonn, Saarland University and University of Heidelberg.