Overgeneralization and change: The role of acquisition in diachrony

Abstract

Cournane (this volume) argues that child language acquisition is not only responsible for innovation in language change processes but that young learners are also responsible for the incrementation of the change in a language community. She sketches an inverted U-shaped model of incrementation (p. 143), where children’s initial overgeneralization of a linguistic phenomenon (input-divergence) is followed by a drop in production of the overgeneralized form (due to children’s sensitivity to adult input), which is again followed by an increase in production in late childhood and adolescence (possibly caused by input from other children).