UMassLinguistics (@umasslinguistics.bsky.social)

Young children are not the main drivers of language change Theoretical study by Limor Raviv, Damian Blasi and Vera Kempe, argues that children are not likely to be the main force behind linguistic innovation. For more than a century, scholars have repeated a powerful idea: that the mistakes children make when learning to speak are the seeds of language change. From 19th-century linguist Henry Sweet’s famous claim that “if languages were learnt perfectly by the children of each generation, then languages would not change,” to contemporary studies, the notion that children drive language evolution has been pervasive in linguistics, psychology, and even popular understanding. The new theoretical paper "Children are not the main agents of language change" argues that this popular belief is unfounded: language change is not the result of children’s acquisition errors. Instead, the real engine of change is everyday language use among older speakers, with adolescents and young adults being the more likely agents of change.   https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1097285