This article explores intra-individual variation and language change across the lifespan of eight speakers from a small Austrian village. Four phonological variables in two settings (informal conversation vs. formal interview) are traced across longitudinal panel data that span 43 years. The analysis reveals an increase of dialect features (retrograde change), even though apparent-time as well as real-time trend studies indicate dialect loss in the Bavarian speaking parts of Austria. The panel data also indicate that neither the group means at one moment in time nor their averaged changes are representative of the intra-individual variation of any of the eight speakers. Regarding this non-representativity, the article introduces the classical ergodic theorem to variationist sociolinguistics. Evidence will be provided that change across the lifespan of an individual is a non-ergodic process. Thus, it is argued that variationists have to be more cautious when they generalise from group-derived estimates to individual developments and vice versa .

中文翻译：

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整个生命周期内的个体内部差异：奥地利小组研究的结果

本文探讨了来自一个奥地利小村庄的八位演讲者整个生命周期内的个体差异和语言变化。在跨越43年的纵向面板数据中追踪了两种情况下的四个语音变量（非正式对话与正式访谈）。该分析揭示了方言特征的增加（逆行变化），尽管表观时间和实时趋势研究表明奥地利巴伐利亚州的部分地区方言消失。面板数据还表明，该组在某一时刻的均值或它们的平均变化都不能代表八个讲话者中任何一个的内部个体变化。关于这种非代表性，本文将经典的遍历定理引入了变异主义的社会语言学。将提供证据表明，在整个人的整个生命周期中进行更改都是非遍历过程。因此，有观点认为，变异论者在从小组推导的估计推广到个人发展时必须更加谨慎，反之亦然。