Language Change and Variation

The Young Scholars Forum of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities was launched in 2004 with the aim of bringing together outstanding young scholars in Israel. In addition to serving as a platform for discussion and thought, the forum is designed to promote collaborative intellectual and research activity among researchers from different institutions and from a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Each year, a group of young scholars from academic institutions in Israel is selected for the forum. A member of the Academy heads each group and guides its discussion of a broad topic chosen for the group, which includes young scholars from a range of fields related to the topic. The collection of articles presented herein is a product of the meetings of the Young Scholars Forum in Linguistics that met for three semesters, in 2015-2016, under the guidance of Professor Ruth Berman. The articles by the participants in the collection, representing a variety of fields of expertise, are arranged in three sections, according to their subjects: diachronic studies, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. The issue of change and diversity in language is central to today's linguistic discourse. It is examined in the collection from a variety of complementary and mutually enriching perspectives.