Article published in:
Language Development: The lifespan perspective
Edited by Annette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 37] 2015
► pp. 109–128

A sociolinguistic perspective on vocabulary richness in a seven-year comparison of older adults

Vocabulary richness is known to either stay stable or increase into old age. The sociolinguistic aspects of related phenomena have not been studied intensely until now. We analyse a corpus of spoken French in two series of interviews, guided in 2005 and 2012, with 28 participants living their later life. We included three measures of vocabulary richness that demonstrated significant sociolinguistic relevance. The growth rate differed significantly with the portion of high-frequency elements such as fillers diminishing from the first to the second series. The reduction of ‘redundant’ elements can be seen as an effective way to maintain the perception of fluency in speech even if its production is cognitively and somatically more expensive.

Published online: 22 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.37.06ger
References
Abrams, L. & Farrell, M.T
2011 Language processing in normal aging. In The Handbook of Psycholinguistic and Cognitive Processes: Perspectives in Communication Disorders, J. Guendouzi, F. Loncke & M.J. Williams (eds), 49–73. New York NY: Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Al, B.P.F
1980 Sur la richesse lexicale du Corpus d’Orléans: Contribution à l’analyse sociolinguistique d’un vocabulaire oral. In Linguistic Studies Offered to Berthe Siertsema, D.J. van Alkemade (ed.), 315–321. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Baayen, R.H
2001 Word Frequency Distributions. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Word frequency distributions. In Quantitative Linguistics: An International Handbook [Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science; HSK 27], R. Köhler, G. Altmann & R.G. Piotrowski (eds), 396–409. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
2013 Package ‘languageR’ [script]. Repository CRAN: r​-project​.org.
Bailey, G
2004 Real and apparent time. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, J.K. Chambers, P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes (eds), 312–332. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Balibar, R
1999 L’école de 1880: Le français national: Républicain, scolaire, grammatical, primaire. In Histoire de la Langue Française 1880–1914, G. Antoine & R. Martin (eds), 255–293. Paris: CNRS Éditions.Google Scholar
Beeching, K
2007 La co-variation des marqueurs discursifs “bon”, “c’est-à-dire”, “enfin”, “hein”, “quand même”, “quoi” et “si vous voulez”: une question d’identité? Langue Française 154(2): 78–93.Google Scholar
2011 The sociolinguistics of lexical variation in Standard French: A diachronic perspective. In On Linguistic Change in French: Socio-historical Approaches: Studies in Honour of R. Anthony Lodge, T. Pooley, D. Lagorgette & R.A. Lodge (eds), 37–53. Chambéry: Université de Savoie, Laboratoire langages, littératures, sociétés.Google Scholar
Blanchet, P
2001 Enquêtes sur les évolutions générationnelles du français dans le pays vannetais (Bretagne). Français moderne 1: 58–76.Google Scholar
Bosshardt, H.-G
1994 Sprachgebrauch im Alter: Kompensation und Adaption infolge von Veränderungen im Kurzzeitgedächtnis. In Altern, Gehirn und Persönlichkeit, W. Kuhn (ed.), 125–136. Bern: Huber.Google Scholar
Campione, E., Véronis J. & Deulofeu, H.-J
2005 The French corpus. In C-Oral-Rom: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 15], E. Cresti & M. Moneglia (eds), 111–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, J
2005 Oral Narration in Modern French: A Linguistic Analysis of Temporal Patterns. London: Legenda.Google Scholar
Christ, H
1998 1880–1939: le français entre deux guerres. In Histoire de la Diffusion et de l’Enseignement du Français dans le Monde, W. Frijhoff & A. Reboullet (eds), 50–71. Vanves: Hachette.Google Scholar
Clark, H.H. & Fox Tree, J.E
2002 Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition 84(1): 73–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H. & Wasow, T
1998 Repeating words in spontaneous speech. Cognitive Psychology 37: 201–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cresti, E
2005 Notes on lexical strategy, structural strategies and surface clause indexes in the C-ORAL-Rom spoken corpora. In C-Oral-Rom: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 15], E. Cresti & M. Moneglia (eds), 209–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dostie, G
(ed.) 2004 Pragmaticalisation et Marqueurs Discursifs: Analyse Sémantique et Traitement Lexicographique. Bruxelles: De Boeck. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ESLO = Enquêtes SocioLinguistiques à Orléans
, ESLO 1 & ESLO 2, Corpora of Spoken French. 1968–1974; 2008– Orléans: Laboratoire Ligérien de Linguistique (LLL). eslo​.huma​-num​.fr.Google Scholar
Fraser, B
1999 What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics 31: 931–952. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerstenberg, A
2011 Generation und Sprachprofile im höheren Lebensalter. Untersuchungen zum Französischen auf der Basis eines Korpus biographischer Interviews. Frankfurt: Klostermann.Google Scholar
Guiraud, P
1954 Les caractères statistiques du vocabulaire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Herdan, G
1960 Type-token mathematics. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Hess, T.M., Hinson, J.T. & Hodges, E.A
2009 Moderators of and mechanisms underlying stereotype threat effects on older adults’ memory performance. Experimental Aging Research 35(2): 153–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horton, W.S., Spieler, D.H. & Shriberg, E
2010 A corpus analysis of patterns of age-related change in conversational speech. Psychology and Aging 25(3): 708–713. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
INSEE = Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques
Paris www​.insee​.fr.
Johnson, E
1993 The relationship between lexical variation and lexical change. Language Variation and Change 3: 285–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S., Rash, S., Kynette, D. & Norman, S
1990 Telling stories: The structure of adults’ narratives. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 2–3: 205–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labbé, D. & Hubert, P
1997 Vocabulary richness. Lexicometrica 0: 1–8.Google Scholar
Labov, W
2013 The Language of Life and Death: The Transformation of Experience in Oral Narrative. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LangAge =
Gerstenberg, A 2005; 2012 Corpus of Spoken French, part of Corpora for Language and Aging Research (CLARe). Reference: Gerstenberg 2011.
Le, X., Lancashire, I., Hirst, G. & Jokel, R
2011 Longitudinal detection of dementia through lexical and syntactic changes in writing. Literary and Linguistic Computing 26(4): 435–460. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, B
2010 Corpus and Sociolinguistics: Investigating Age and Gender in Female Talk [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 38]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Hanlon, L., Wilcox, K.A. & Kemper, S
2005 Age differences in implicit and explicit associative memory: exploring elaborative processing effects. Experimental Aging Research 27(4): 341–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Popescu, I.-I. & Altmann, G
2009 Word Frequency Studies. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramscar, M., Hendrix, P. & Baayen, R.H
2013 The myth of cognitive decline. In Proceedings of the 35th Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz & I. Wachsmuth (eds), 1193–1198. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Ramscar, M., Hendrix, P., Shaoul, C., Milin, P. & Baayen, H
2014 The myth of cognitive decline: non-linear dynamics of lifelong learning. Topics in Cognitive Science 6: 5–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salthouse, T.A
2009 When does age-related cognitive decline begin? Neurobiology of Aging 30: 507–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, D. & Lessard, R
1975 Vocabulary richness: a sociolinguistic analysis. Science 190(4215): 689–690. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E.A. & Sacks, H
1973 Opening up closings. Semiotica 8: 289–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shafto, M.A., Burke, D.M., Stamatakis, E.A., Tam, P.P. & Tyler, L.K
2007 On the tip-of-the-tongue: Neural correlates of increased word-finding failures in normal aging. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19(12): 2060–2070. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singer, T., Verhaeghen, P., Ghisletta, P., Lindenberger, U. & Baltes, P.B
2003 The fate of cognition in very old age: Six-year longitudinal findings in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). Psychology and Aging 18: 318–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taddei Gheiler, F
2005 La Lingua degli Anziani. Locarno: Osservatorio linguistico della Svizzera italiana.Google Scholar
Tainturier, M.-J., Tremblay, M. & Roch Lecours, A
1992 Educational level and the word frequency effect: A lexical decision investigation. Brain and Language 43(3): 460–474. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibault, P. & Daveluy, M
1989 Quelques traces du passage du temps dans le parler des Montréalais, 1971–1984. Language Variation and Change 1(1): 19–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tweedie, F.J. & Baayen, R.H
1998 How variable may a constant be? Measures of lexical richness in perspective. Computers and the Humanities 32(5): 323–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wechsler, D
1941 The Measurement of Adult Intelligence, 2nd edn. Baltimore MD: Williams & Wilkins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yule, G.U
1944 The statistical study of literary vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zellner-Keller, B
2007 “Comment est-ce qu’on dit?” Vieillissement et manque de mot en conversation. Nouveaux Cahiers de Linguistique Française 28: 87–97.Google Scholar
Zipf, G.K
1935 The psycho-biology of language. Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Bolly, Catherine T. & Dominique Boutet
2018. The multimodal CorpAGEst corpus: keeping an eye on pragmatic competence in later life. Corpora 13:3 ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
El Sherbiny Ismail, Eman, Annette Gerstenberg, Marta Lupica Spagnolo, Friederike Schulz, Anne Vandenbroucke, F. Neveu, S. Prévost, A. Steuckardt, G. Bergounioux & B. Hamma
2022. L’âge avancé en perspective longitudinale et ses outils : LangAge, un corpus au pluriel. SHS Web of Conferences 138 ► pp. 10003 ff. DOI logo
Fuchs, Susanne, Laura L. Koenig & Annette Gerstenberg
2021. A Longitudinal Study of Speech Acoustics in Older French Females: Analysis of the Filler Particle euh across Utterance Positions. Languages 6:4 ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo
Gerstenberg, Annette & Heidi E. Hamilton
2022. Older adults’ conversations and the emergence of “narrative crystals”. Narrative Inquiry DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.