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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