Individuals, communities, and sound change: an introduction

Do individual differences affect sound change? Traditional approaches to phonetic and phonological change typically downplay differences between the individuals who make up a speech community that is undergoing change, but this has been questioned in recent years in a number of ways from within several distinct traditions of research. The articles in the Glossa Special Collection to which this article is an introduction consider the extent to which individual differences (at a psychological, sociological, physiological, genetic and/or behavioral level) between the members of a speech community might or might not be important in explaining the general properties of sound change. This introduction places these articles in context, considers what we might mean by ‘sound change’ and ‘individual differences’, and aims to build a synthesis of the current research landscape in the area.