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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.
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">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/ BybeeSlobin1982ChildrenEnglish PastTense.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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