Cognitive influences in language evolution: Psycholinguistic predictors of loan word borrowing

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 186; pp. 147 - 158
• Main Authors: Monaghan, Padraic, Roberts, Seán G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.05.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Age of acquisition; Changes; Cladistics; Cognition; Cognitive ability; Cultural change; Cultural factors; Diachronic linguistics; Dutch language; Fidelity; Frequency; Grammatical categories; Humans; Innovations; Language; Language acquisition; Language Development; Language evolution; Language incrementation; Language thought relationship; Loan-words; Loanwords; Origin of language; Psycholinguistics; Social interactions; Tree structures; Vocabulary; Vocabulary change; Word frequency; Word length; Words; Age of acquisition; Language evolution; Loan-words; Frequency; Word length; Vocabulary change; Language incrementation; Language acquisition
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.02.007

Languages change due to social, cultural, and cognitive influences. In this paper, we provide an assessment of these cognitive influences on diachronic change in the vocabulary. Previously, tests of stability and change of vocabulary items have been conducted on small sets of words where diachronic change is imputed from cladistics studies. Here, we show for a substantially larger set of words that stability and change in terms of documented borrowings of words into English and into Dutch can be predicted by psycholinguistic properties of words that reflect their representational fidelity. We found that grammatical category, word length, age of acquisition, and frequency predict borrowing rates, but frequency has a non-linear relationship. Frequency correlates negatively with probability of borrowing for high-frequency words, but positively for low-frequency words. This borrowing evidence documents recent, observable diachronic change in the vocabulary enabling us to distinguish between change associated with transmission during language acquisition and change due to innovations by proficient speakers.