Penny, I think that’s a helpful way of reframing the discussion. It makes it clear that it is less about chronological age, than about social action. Your work (and lots of others, I’ll only mention Farhana Alam’s 2015 Glasgow PhD because it may not be a source that a lot of people on the list are familiar with and it reinforces your point that it is the peer-based social order that matters – not age as such).
Presumably, your "peer-based social order” kicks in at different ages in different communities, and this is one of the things we might be trying to find out in our research. Perhaps, for instance, in communities in the Pacific where adults don’t really talk to kids like middle class Western parents do (communities like Bambi Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs have described, and which – just incidentally – resonate even today with the Pasifika and Filipino students in my class), then the emergence of a peer-based social order might happen earlier than it does in some of the situations we’re more familiar with.
chrz, mm
> On 24/03/2017, at 5:08 PM, Penelope D Eckert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I’m convinced too, Angus. So the question, Dan, is when do young children first form a peer group? What are you calling a peer group? A little friendship group? I assume not. I think the real action is when an age cohort constructs a peer-based social order - not just a group (or a bunch of groups). That is, when they form a social market, and when kids begin to see themselves as products on that market. And to form a market they have to rearrange, merge, break up those groups. My work in elementary schools shows that happening in preadolescence, with a quite conscious goal of achieving adolescence.
>
>
> On Mar 23, 2017, at 8:46 PM, Angus B. Grieve-Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dan, I agree that this doesn't contradict the Bybee and Slobin article. The point is that small children can't change language *on their own*: it takes a village, or a city.
>
> I was disappointed at Yang's presentation at the 2016 LSA that he focused so exclusively on small children. I haven't read his work in detail; maybe he does talk about older adults. I tried to talk to him afterwards, but that was the panel where the discussants huddled together on stage for 10-15 minutes and then left, ignoring the audience. If his data show that people of all ages make changes, then his model should include all ages.
> I also haven't had time to wrap my head around the distinction you raised between transmission and diffusion - unless it's just time vs. space? In any case, I've been convinced by Penny Eckert that adolescents in particular play a very important role.
>
> Here is another paper that Bybee and Slobin published with more detail about that study - but minus the catchy title:
>
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/414099
>
> On 3/23/2017 11:15 AM, Daniel Ezra Johnson wrote:
>> Another view - perhaps with more support! - is that older children and adolescents are very much part of the process of transmission and incrementation in communities, as argued for example by a paper under review.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 2:04 PM, Daniel Ezra Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Re: this article by Bybee and Slobin, I've asked Charles Yang if he'd allow me to post the following (see also chapter 6 of his 2016 book, where acquisition data from many cases are discussed). Following his affirmative reply, I do so, viz.
>>
>> "Only third graders and adults produced irregularization errors. Adults did so more. Not 3- and 4-year-olds and first graders, for whom over-regularization abounds. The wug test is fishy for older speakers and it seems like a game: see Carson Schutze's papers on this. Finally, [note] the virtual absence of irregularization from millions of words of child production data."
>>
>> This is not to contradict B & S, but to underline that everybody changes language: young children, older children, and adults. The question is whether we can observe that different age stages are associated with different types of change.
>>
>> The hypothesis might be that community change is tightly linked to the changes made by young children when they first form a peer group.
>>
>> The changes made by older children, adolescents, and even more likely, those made by adults - which are (by definition) changes over the lifespan - may correspond to the "diffusion" of linguistic change (when looked at geographically) rather than its "transmission" (and "incrementation") within communities.
>>
>> > Le 23 mars 2017 à 12:02, Angus B. Grieve-Smith <[log in to unmask]> a écrit :
>> >
>> > In counterpoint, please see Bybee and Slobin (1982), "Why small children cannot change language on their own":
>> >
>> > https://www.unm.edu/~jbybee/downloads/BybeeSlobin1982ChildrenEnglishPastTense.pdf
>> >
>> >
>> >> On 3/23/2017 2:50 AM, Daniel Ezra Johnson wrote:
>> >> "In most research on language change, the focus is on adults, and
>> >> children are usually ignored"
>> >>
>> >> But maybe this is more methodology (access, largely), since I too was
>> >> always given to believe that young children were the absolute key, at
>> >> least for the type of change associated with "transmission"
>> >> ("incrémentation", etc.). There's a great project starting up in
>> >> France under the direction of Jean-Pierre Chevrot, who is going to
>> >> study the spread of innovations in French by recording entire primary
>> >> school classes (for some hours each day, for a number of months?).
>> >> It's great to find ways to study language change right where we
>> >> believe much of it is happening!
>> >>
>> >> As far as "awkward" ("is concerned", I would have _insisted_ on saying
>> >> 20 years ago), I think I'm an adopter of the new sense, but as often
>> >> with newer slang, I sometimes wonder if I'm using it "wrong"
>> >> (differently from the kids). I would have said it's still different
>> >> from "weird" and still related to the earlier "awkward". But, even if
>> >> it "just means 'weird'", it could be part of a cultural and linguistic
>> >> turn towards the emotional and social, in speaking and in evaluating
>> >> language use. Here are a few examples of words and phrases on the rise
>> >> (omitting corpus-linguistic proof) that I feel [sic] represent this
>> >> trend:
>> >>
>> >> I feel
>> >> awkward
>> >> offensive
>> >> inappropriate
>> >> call out on
>> >>
>> >> And there must be positive examples too, which I may find myself less
>> >> often on the receiving end of... The idea (sorry I can't remember
>> >> where I read this) is that one is now tending to evaluate speech more
>> >> - or at least more so than previously - in terms of the emotional
>> >> reaction of the hearer, and the social consequences for the speaker,
>> >> rather than focusing on its "intellectual content". I think - or at
>> >> least feel - that much of "political correctness" and the debate
>> >> thereabout could be related to this "turn".
>> >>
>> >> Dan
>> >>
>> >>> Le 23 mars 2017 à 06:49, Troike, Rudolph C - (rtroike) <[log in to unmask]> a écrit :
>> >>>
>> >>> In most research on language change, the focus is on adults, and children are usually ignored
>> >> ########################################################################
>> >>
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> --
> -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>
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> *******************
> Penelope Eckert
> Albert Ray Lang Professor of Humanities and Sciences
> Department of Linguistics and, by Courtesy, Anthropology
> Stanford University
> Stanford CA 94305-2150
> http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/
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