Chapter 5. Multilingual acquisition across the lifespan as a sociohistorical trigger for language change

Abstract

Language contact implies more variation in language use, both in the individual and in the community. This increased variation can accelerate language change, but it can also halt it (Aalberse et al. 2019; Muysken 2013). Which parts of language do change, and which parts do not depends on cognitive and social factors: the change or non-change should be cognitively possible and socially acceptable. What is cognitively possible or cognitively likely partly depends on the age of the language user. What is socially desirable is also partly dependent on age. This chapter provides an overview of bilingual speaker optimization strategies inspired by Muysken (2013), relating preferences for a type of strategy to life stages. The chapter ends with a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of combining the lifespan acquisition perspective with the historical sociolinguistics of language contact.