The actuation problem asks why a linguistic change occurs in a particular language at a
particular time and space. Responses to this problem are multifaceted. This review …

Empirically-observed word frequency effects in regular sound change present a puzzle: how
can high-frequency words change faster than low-frequency words in some cases, slower in …

Sociolinguists study the interaction between language and society. Variationist
sociolinguistics—the subfield of sociolinguistics which is the focus of this issue—uses …

It has long been understood that speakers produce and listeners perceive non-random,
systematic phonetic variants that serve as the raw material for sound change. This …

The study explored whether an asymmetric phonetic overlap between speech sounds could
be turned into sound change through propagation around a community of speakers. The …

Variation in speech has always been important to phonetic theory, but takes center stage in
the growing area of sociophonetics, which places the role of the social at the heart of the …

Abstract In Andalusian Spanish, there is a well-documented sound change in which pre-has
become post-aspiration in sequences of/s/followed by voiceless stops. Here we investigate …

This study involves a perceptual categorization task for Australian English, designed to
investigate regional and social variation in category boundaries between close-front vowel …

The focus of the study is an agent-based model (ABM) concerned with simulating
phonological stability and change using real speech data from a population of speakers. At …

Iterated learning models of language evolution have typically been used to study the
emergence of language, rather than historical language change. We use iterated learning …