It’s my pleasure to inform you that our latest paper, “Kielen natiivihallinnan variaatio ja sosiolingvistinen meneillään olevan kielenmuutoksen tutkimus” [Young adults’ language proficiency and on-going language change], is out in Virittäjä (in Finnish). In this paper, we examined the language proficiency of young adults with focus on derivational morphology. The data consisted of a university entrance exam testing various aspects of linguistic knowledge, e.g., a derivation test in which impossible, possible and occurring derivations were recognized. The scores of the matriculation examination predicted the subjects’ success in recognizing possible derivations with statistical significance. Qualitative examination of different derivation types revealed clear variation and different recognition strategies between subjects. As language proficiency varies, it can affect the results of studies into on-going language change. If language proficiency is not sufficiently taken into account, developmental and proficiency-related factors could be mistakenly read as change on a societal level.
Laasanen, M., Pajunen, A., & Häikiö, T. (2022). Kielen natiivihallinnan variaatio ja sosiolingvistinen meneillään olevan kielenmuutoksen tutkimus. Virittäjä, 126(3). doi:10.23982/vir.83371
Tuomo Häikiö 