About

Funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (Research Network grant no. AH/V008080/1, 1 September 2021 – 31 August 2023).

Our network aims to investigate the nature of cyclic language change across languages, principally with a view to assessing the role of pragmatics in triggering and driving changes of this nature at the levels of (morpho)syntax and semantics/pragmatics.

What is cyclic language change?

Linguistic cycles are regular, recurrent patterns of language change taking place in a structured manner. They have inherent direction, typically involving the loss of a particular linguistic item and its renewal by another, but also in some instances changes internal to a given item or construction.

Aims and objectives

Network members will study a number of specific cases of cyclicity from across a wide range of languages, in order to obtain a better understanding of the nature of different types of cycles and their place within a broader theory of language change.