Thinking About Shin & Miller (2022)’s Step 1

ABSTRACT

Based on findings from a variety of research, Shin and Miller (2022) propose a 4-step process that children go through as they learn sociolinguistic variation. Their proposal raises many interesting questions that should inspire future research. Here, I discuss their Step 1 – the stage in which, according to their proposal, children produce only a single variant, and so appear to be (temporarily) regularizing – and suggest this may not be the right characterization for all children.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).