Background

EMMA has been compiled for the ERC-funded research project Mind-Bending Grammars. The corpus is designed specifically for the quantitative study of syntactic change across the lifespan of individual language users from various perspectives, including:

• cognitive dynamics of linguistic knowledge
• historical sociolinguistics
• intragenerational vs. intergenerational change

With the help of the corpus, the project wants to settle how much innovation and change is possible across the lifespan in the domain of syntax. Major goals include (i) to fundamentally advance the debate on how different intragenerational change is from intergenerational change; (ii) to determine to what extent syntactic changes co-evolve; (iii) how social and cognitive factors interact.

While compiled for syntactic research, the corpus lends itself well for all kinds of linguistic research that benefits from the individual perspective.