ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview and the background for the study of lifespan and community change through the lens of a combined panel and trend study. It begins with a review of the established patterns of individual and community change from the existing literature and argues for a combined real- and apparent-time approach to reconcile conspicuous disparities between the individual and the community. This volume has three overall aims: (1) to establish the theoretical and methodological foundation for assessing the compatibility and complementarity of combined panel and trend studies; (2) to illustrate a prototypical situation of rampant dialect leveling and attrition drawing on a longitudinal study of Swabian, a major German dialect; and (3) to investigate indexicalities of identity, accommodation, and geographic mobility in real- and apparent-time to demonstrate how predictable linguistic patterns influence variation and language change.
