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Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change: Historical sociolinguistic perspectives
Edited by Israel Sanz-Sánchez
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 14] 2024
► pp. 179–202

Chapter 8
The influences of adult and child speakers in the emergence of Light Warlpiri, an Australian mixed language

ORCID logo | The Australian National University
Many analyses of language change are only able to draw on data from adult speech and therefore cannot empirically motivate a connection between an origin of a potential change and the actuation of that change throughout a community of speakers. The case study of the recent emergence of Light Warlpiri (O’Shannessy 2005), a mixed language spoken in northern Australia, provides new perspectives on the roles of different age groups of adults and children in the emergence of the mixed language, and suggests an empirically motivated model of how a mixed language can emerge from practices of code-switching between languages, in a two-stage process (O’Shannessy 2020). This case also has important implications for the sociohistorical study of the potential role of young learners in other cases of language change and the emergence of new languages.
Keywords: Warlpiri, Light Warlpiri, acquisition, child language, Australia, mixed language, language contact, innovation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The sociohistorical context for the emergence of Light Warlpiri
  • 3.The roles of adults and children in the emergence of Light Warlpiri
  • 4.The role of child speakers in the development of Light Warlpiri since its emergence
  • 5.Language acquisition and the historical sociolinguistics of Light Warlpiri
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.14.08osh
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