Semantic change in adults is not primarily a generational phenomenon

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Language change is often debated as either generational or a zeitgeist phenomenon.
• Understanding word meaning evolution requires examining speaker age and adoption patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether word meaning change is generational or a zeitgeist process.
• To analyze the role of speaker age in the adoption of evolving word senses.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of over 100 words across 7.9 million U.S. congressional speeches.
• Utilized language model-based word sense induction to identify word senses.
• Modeled word sense prevalence as a function of time and speaker age.

Main Results:

• Most words showed a small but statistically significant effect of speaker age.
• Older speakers generally adopted changes in word usage more slowly than younger speakers.
• Adoption of new word senses occurred within a few years for older speakers.

Conclusions:

• Word meaning change among mature speakers is predominantly a zeitgeist process, not generational.
• Minor age-based differences exist, but older adults readily adopt new word usage patterns.
• Findings suggest rapid, widespread adoption of linguistic innovations across age groups.