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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 13:3 (2023) ► pp.327–374

Children as agents of language change

Diachronic evidence from Latin American Spanish phonology

ORCID logo | West Chester University
ORCID logo | Texas A&M University

This paper explores the operation of child language acquisition as a critical factor in some forms of language change. It proposes a sociohistorical model that incorporates the potential for young children to function as linguistic agents in certain environments, characterized by unpredictable variation in the input, lack of normative mechanisms, and the possibility for the emergence of peer networks among children. The model is then applied to explain a well-documented but poorly understood phonological change in the history of Latin American Spanish: the simplification of the system of sibilants in 16th-century Colonial Spanish. This change was nestled in ecological environments characterized by intense contact among L1 and L2 speakers of several varieties of Iberian and non-Iberian languages, as well as the rapid breakdown and reshaping of social networks. We argue that, in the absence of strong normative pressures, the advantages of certain options for early acquisition were crucial in the eventual creation and generalization of a new sociolinguistic norm. This study is methodologically innovative in that it combines not just archival evidence and sociohistorical information, but also present-day acquisitional data. The latter offers a piece often missing in sociohistorical accounts of language change.

Keywords: child language acquisition, language change, Spanish, historical sociolinguistics, sibilants
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Early theoretical approaches: Can young children lead language change?
  • 3.Recent findings from child acquisition of variation
    • 3.1Acquisition of spoken languages in unsystematically variable natural settings
    • 3.2Acquisition of new sign languages
    • 3.3Experimental studies of variation acquisition
  • 4.Young children as language change leaders: A sociohistorical model
    • 4.1Condition #1: Unsystematic variation without clear social correlates in the input
    • 4.2Condition #2: Lack of effective systems to impose conformity on community norms
    • 4.3Condition #3: Emergence of peer networks among young children
  • 5.Case study: Early Colonial Spanish (ECS) sibilants
    • 5.1Sibilants in medieval Castilian and ECS: An introduction
    • 5.2The ecology of sibilants in early colonial Spanish
      • 5.2.1The external ecology of sibilants in early colonial Spanish
      • 5.2.2The internal ecology of sibilants in early colonial Spanish
    • 5.3The better known: Sibilants in child language acquisition
      • 5.3.1Developmental constraints on the acquisition of sibilants
      • 5.3.2Sibilant systems cross-linguistically
      • 5.3.3Monolingual vs. multilingual child sibilant acquisition
      • 5.3.4Child acquisition and the diachrony of sibilant systems
    • 5.4The lesser known: Towards a new account of ECS sibilants
  • 6.Discussion and implications for historical sociolinguistics
    • a.Acquisition errors vs. acquisition-driven innovations
    • b.Usual vs. ‘unusual’ socialization patterns in child acquisition
    • c.Acquisition across the lifespan
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 21 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.21033.san
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