In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data‐driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations and the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood‐level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language.

中文翻译：

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较早地学习具有一致历时使用模式的词：使用时间对齐词嵌入的计算分析

在这项研究中，我们使用时间对齐的词嵌入和大量的英语历时语料库，以数据驱动、可扩展的方式量化语言变化，该方式以语言使用为基础。我们在控制频率、上下文多样性、具体性、长度、语音的主要部分、正字法邻域密度和历时频率变化的同时，展示了语言变化的测量与习得年龄 ( AoA )之间的独特而可靠的关系。我们分析了语言变化的测量，以应对词汇表示的变化以及词汇表示与使用模式最相似的单词之间关系的变化，表明它们捕捉了语言变化的不同方面。我们的结果显示了语言变化和AoA之间的独特关系，这在考虑邻里级别的语言变化测量时更强：具有更连贯的历时使用模式的单词往往更早获得。结果支持了在语言个体发生和民族发生过程之间建立联系的理论。