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Out Of The Mouths Of Babes: Children And The Formation Of The Rio De La Plata Spanish Address System, Israel Sanz-Sánchez, María Irene Moyna

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the effects of child language acquisition as a critical factor in a morphological change, namely, the replacement of the etymologically singular second person paradigm (tuteo) by its plural counterpart (voseo) in 19th century Rio de la Plata Spanish. The account applies a sociohistorical model which proposes that young children can function as language change agents in environments characterized by unpredictable input variation, lack of normative mechanisms, and the emergence of peer networks among young learners. The model is then applied to explain the rapid generalization of voseo in the late 1800s, a well-documented but poorly understood process. …