Chapter 2
Monolingual and bilingual child language acquisition and language
change
This chapter reviews research on children’s
monolingual and bilingual acquisition of linguistic variation to
consider children’s role in language change. Many patterns of
variation are learned early and veridically, but some are acquired
late and may be more susceptible to change. Further, children
sometimes regularize variable input and may create novel patterns
when exposed to different dialects or languages, which suggests that
contact settings can serve as breeding grounds for language change.
The chapter thus turns to the topic of childhood bilingualism and
reviews research on child heritage speakers, whose divergences from
their input sometimes persist into adulthood. The chapter culminates
by considering the implications of the research reviewed for
socially informed models of language change and historical
sociolinguistics.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Children’s acquisition of (socio)linguistic variation
- 2.1Timing of acquisition
- 2.2Children’s innovations
- 3.Child heritage speakers
- 3.1Null objects
- 3.2Gender agreement
- 3.3Differential object marking
- 3.4Child heritage speakers and linguistic variation
- 4.Child language acquisition and the historical sociolinguistics of
language change: Challenges and opportunities
- 5.Conclusion
-
Note
-
References