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Joint innovation

An alternative to the initiation-diffusion and speaker-listener dichotomies in language change

ORCiD logo with link | University of New Mexico
 | Pennsylvania State University
Published online: 26 August 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24028.byb
Abstract
In this contribution we examine current views of the relationship between innovation on the one hand, and diffusion of a change through a community on the other. We also note in the recent literature much discussion of the role of the listener vs. the role of the speaker in innovation and spread. This paper re-examines the dichotomies just mentioned — innovation vs. spread and speaker vs. listener — and finds them unjustified. We consider two types of change — sound change and grammaticalization — which are similar in that they both show directional patterns across time and across languages, and they are both considered to be gradual. Based on empirical evidence from a wide range of studies from interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, and diachronic linguistics, we argue that innovation occurs jointly between speaker and listener in the same speech community and spreads gradually on all dimensions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The close alignment of speaker and listener in conversation
  • 3.The individual and the force of community norms
  • 4.Joint innovation in sound change
    • 4.1The speaker and listener in sound change
    • 4.2Sound change and the “grammar”
    • 4.3Joint innovation as applied to sound change
  • 5.Grammaticalization
    • 5.1Changes in categories, change in distributions
    • 5.2Gradual change in constituency
    • 5.3Semantic-pragmatic change: Inferencing
  • 6.Conclusions
    • 6.1What constitutes a change in a language?
    • 6.2The individual and the community
  • References
References (135)
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