Abstract This paper reviews theoretical and methodological advances and issues in lifespan research and discusses how the issues at stake are addressed in an ongoing research project. Summarizing the state of the art, we conclude that next to nothing is known about lifespan changes affecting syntactic or grammaticalizing constructions that goes beyond exploratory or anecdotal evidence. The Mind-Bending Grammars project, which examines the adaptive powers of adult cognition and constraints on these powers, aspires to make headway in this area. In this paper, we introduce some of the major goals of the project and present a new large-scale longitudinal corpus of 50 adults that was established to study grammatical change across the lifespan. Particular attention is paid to the constraints on the adoption of novel grammatical patterns in the aging mind. Taking be going to as a case study, we present evidence that (highly educated) healthy monolingual speakers continue to participate in grammatical innovations across the lifespan.

中文翻译：

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语法化与语言个体：生命研究的新途径

摘要本文回顾了生命周期研究中的理论和方法论进展以及问题，并讨论了如何在一个正在进行的研究项目中解决问题。总结最新的技术水平，我们得出的结论是，对于影响语法或语法化结构的寿命变化，人们几乎一无所知，这超出了探索性或传闻证据。“思维弯曲文法”项目研究了成人认知的适应能力以及对这些能力的限制，希望在这一领域取得进展。在本文中，我们介绍了该项目的一些主要目标，并提出了一个新的大规模纵向语料库，该语料库由50位成年人组成，旨在研究整个生命周期内的语法变化。特别要注意在衰老思维中采用新颖语法模式的限制。以案例研究为例，我们提供证据表明，（受过良好教育）健康的会说英语的人将在整个生命周期中继续参与语法创新。