Synchrony and Diachrony. Introduction to a dynamic interface

That the two dimensions of language variation are closely intertwined is nothing new, although at different stages in the history of linguistics their relation has been overlooked, if not explicitly ignored (see section 2). However, still little effort has been made to provide a unitary account of their interface and, more importantly, little attention has been devoted to a systematic exam of the theoretical and methodological tools through which such interface can be better captured and analyzed. In this volume, we aim to i) gather together a good sample of phenomena in which the synchrony-diachrony interface is crucial both at the descriptive and at the explanatory level, ii) to compare how different theoretical frameworks and different methodological tools may account for such interface phenomena, iii) and to identify those factors that are more frequently at play in the interface between synchrony and diachrony.