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Socio-demographic influences on language structure and change: Not all learners are the same

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2016

Till Bergmann ,
Rick Dale  and
Gary Lupyan
Till Bergmann
Affiliation:
Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA 95343 tbergmann@ucmerced.edu rdale@ucmerced.edu www.tillbergmann.com http://cognaction.org/rick/
Rick Dale
Affiliation:
Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA 95343 tbergmann@ucmerced.edu rdale@ucmerced.edu www.tillbergmann.com http://cognaction.org/rick/
Gary Lupyan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706. glupyan@gmail.com http://sapir.psych.wisc.edu/
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Abstract

The Now-or-Never bottleneck has important consequence for understanding why languages have the structures they do. However, not addressed by C&C is that the bottleneck may interact with who is doing the learning: While some languages are mostly learned by infants, others have a large share of adult learners. We argue that such socio-demographic differences extend and qualify C&C's thesis.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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