It is not children but adolescents who develop language

The mistakes children make when learning to speak have been thought for over a century to be the driving forces behind the evolution of language from generation to generation, but now this old belief has been called into question: the study published in the journal Psychological Review and led by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, states that the agents of change are actually adolescents and young adults , who have the opportunity to spread new ways of expressing themselves every day.

Researchers led by Limor Raviv, in fact, found little evidence that the errors children make while learning are able to spread throughout their communities. On the contrary, children and young people play a much more important and active social role , and possess the creativity and flexibility necessary to allow new linguistic forms to establish themselves in a stable manner.

"In our study, we demonstrate that errors made by young children are unlikely to persist and spread to the wider community," the study authors state. "Linguistic change is more likely to emerge from the way adults and adolescents adapt, innovate, and interact in real-world communicative contexts. As they grow, children correct most of their mistakes," the researchers add, "and in any case, they lack the social standing necessary to induce us to imitate them ."

The research, in addition to underscoring the importance of correcting a widespread misunderstanding in the public debate on language, also aims to encourage scholars to carefully examine the empirical evidence underlying their claims, even when these have been repeated for decades: "We believe that the main value of our work," the authors say, "lies in encouraging a better allocation of research resources."