Aspects of linguistic ageing in literary authors across time

Abstract

This work offers an investigation into linguistic changes in a corpus of literary authors hypothesized to be attributable to the effects of ageing. In part, the analysis replicates an earlier study into these effects, but adds to it by explicitly analyzing and modelling competing factors, specifically the influence of background language change. Our results suggest that it is likely that this underlying change in language usage is the primary force for the change observed in the linguistic variables that was previously attributed to linguistic ageing. However, our results are tentative insofar as we do not examine non-linear models in general, or other variables influenced by ageing, or non-professional writers who may be more susceptible to these observed shifts in general language than was observable for the literary authors.