One of the major concerns of sociolinguists is to better understand and explain the mechanisms driving language change, in particular the process by which innovative variants appear and subsequently spread throughout a population. Questions regarding the diffusion of new variants over time have been explored from a variety of perspectives (most prominently in socio-and historical linguistics), and a consistent finding is that the diffusion of innovative variants through the linguistic system forms an S-shaped curve with respect to time (Labov 2001).Similar observations are reported from the field of innovation diffusion research, an interdisciplinary area of the social sciences concerned with how, why, and at what rate innovative ideas and technologies spread through social systems. Studies from innovation diffusion research have shown that the rate of diffusion of (non-linguistic) innovations-including medical, agricultural, political, and technological examples-also forms an S-shaped curve with respect to time (Rogers 1995).The similarities between findings from language change research and innovation diffusion research suggest that language change may be explained by the same mechanisms that govern the social diffusion of non-linguistic innovations. In this paper I apply the theoretical framework of innovation diffusion research to an instance of language change. By approaching the diffusion of linguistic innovations as a social process, I hope to gain insights into the mechanisms of language change from a new perspective.Section 1 gives a background of the S-curve model of diffusion from both the 152 39
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