Thanks all. Paul Foulkes replied to me off this list as his attempt to
post was rejected. I copy here his message - Richard
Hello
Marilyn Vihman and I did a survey article on this issue, with new data:
Foulkes, P. & Vihman, M. (2015) First language acquisition and
phonological change. In P. Honeybone & Salmons, J.C. (eds.) Oxford
Handbook of Historical Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [first
published on-line only in 2013; book published 2015]
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw5I8R4GWPHNbDljMUllNnpZWHM/edit
In short, we dismiss the idea that children are responsible for change.
Best wishes
Paul
++++++++++++++++++++
Paul Foulkes
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
University of York
York YO10 5DD
UK
+44 1904 322669
https://sites.google.com/a/york.ac.uk/paulfoulkes/
https://sites.google.com/site/yorkfss/home
https://sites.google.com/a/york.ac.uk/uklvc10/
On Sat, March 25, 2017 5:10 pm, George Walkden wrote:
> To be fair to the people who impute a major role to child language
> acquirers, they’re usually not interested in the same question that LVCers
> are asking. What’s attributed to acquirers is the source of the
> innovation, the new variant - not its spread through a community or
> language. Hale (1998, “Diachronic syntax”, in the journal Syntax) gives a
> particularly forceful and provocative statement of this position.
>
> In principle at least, it’s possible for a child misanalysis to give rise
> to a form which then becomes relatively uncharacteristic (at the level of
> usage probabilities) of children, and is incremented by the usual suspects
> from decades of sociolinguistic research, teenagers. It’s an empirical
> question whether this is actually how innovations arise, and one that’s
> rather difficult to test - though there is ongoing work on this by people
> like Ailis Cournane at NYU.
>
> So I don’t think anyone thinks that child language acquisition is the
> answer to all questions about what we pretheoretically call language
> change - not even crazy generativists. It depends on the precise
> sub-question one is interested in.
>
> Best,
>
> - George
>
> __
> George Walkden · http://walkden.space
>
> On 25 Mar 2017, at 21:56, TRUDGILL Peter
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> You are right. Only generativists could believe in the
>> “childhood-reanalysis only” thesis of linguistic change. No one who
>> works in linguistic-variation-and-change could possibly subscribe to
>> that hypothesis..
>> ___________________________________________
>>
>> Peter Trudgill FBA
>> Prof. Emeritus of Eng. Linguistics, Fribourg Univ, CH;
>> Hon. Prof. of Sociolinguistics, UEA, Norwich, UK.
>>
>> Peter Trudgill's weekly columns on language and languages in Europe are
>> published in The New European http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home
>>
>>> On 25 Mar 2017, at 20:46, Cameron, Richard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Not sure if this is how to phrase the question, but here goes:
>>>
>>> If it is the case the language change originates in the misanalysis
>>> of
>>> young children as they learn language, why is it that researchers have
>>> repeatedly found cases of change in progress in which teenagers, more
>>> than younger children, display the highest rates/probabilities of
>>> innovative use?
>>>
>>> In other words, the younger children actually lag behind teens. I
>>> refer
>>> to the teenage peak.
>>>
>>> I found this in work on Puerto Rican Spanish quotation strategies.
>>> Sali
>>> Tagliamonte and Alexandra D'Arcy have written about this. Greg Guy and
>>> crew on Australian uptalk found this. Gillian Sankoff has written about
>>> this. I believe that Bill Labov and Penny Eckert have noted this. I may
>>> be misattributing here.
>>>
>>> Implication, perhaps? Language change does not originate in the
>>> misanalysis of children learning a language.
>>>
>>> - Richard Cameron
>>>
>>> On Thu, March 23, 2017 10:46 pm, Angus B. Grieve-Smith 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] <mailto:[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 Ă 12:02, Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>>>>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> a Ă©crit :
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>> <https://www.unm.edu/%7Ejbybee/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 Ă 06:49, Troike, Rudolph C - (rtroike)
>>>>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> a
>>>>> Ă©crit :
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In most research on language change, the focus is on
>>>>> adults, and children are usually ignored
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>> --
>>>>>> -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>>>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>>>> [log in to unmask]
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