Het modelleren van taalinterne en taalexterne factoren van taalverandering

This dissertation investigates how statistical and computational modelling can explain and predict language change. It approaches language change through three main questions: 1. Propagation - how language change spreads through a community and whether its trajectory and speed can be predicted (e.g., using logistic regression). 2. Actuation - why language change begins and how causal factors, both internal (structural, cognitive) and external (social, contact-related), can be empirically tested. 3. Link between individuals and populations - how individual linguistic variation leads to community-wide change. Six case studies, mainly on Dutch and English (with examples from German, French, and Italian), illustrate these aspects. Methodologically, it introduces underused quantitative tools: S-curves for modeling change trajectories, Kolmogorov complexity for linguistic complexity, Granger causality for causal inference, and elastic net regression for individual variation. Together, these methods offer new insights into how and why languages evolve, contributing to diachronic, cognitive, sociolinguistic, and quantitative linguistics.