Adapting to linguistic innovations: the role of language contact in bilingual and monolingual speakers

Contact between speakers and languages may play a key role in driving language change. During interaction, speakers tend to adapt to their interlocutors' speech, which can cumulatively lead to longer-term changes. Yet it remains unclear how innovations emerge, and who drives their adoption. These questions are addressed through two experiments on Italian motion-events framing. Study 1 examines German-Italian bilinguals with varying cumulative German contact, exploring whether exposure to innovative satellite-framed constructions triggers adaptation within Italian and across languages. Study 2 tests Italian monolinguals to assess adaptation in the absence of cross-linguistic influence. Results show that both bilinguals and monolinguals adapt to innovative structures at an abstract level, but only bilinguals with a high degree of German contact maintain these changes in a post-test, highlighting the role of bilingual experience. Findings suggest language contact may enhance the uptake of innovations, providing insight into the cognitive mechanisms underlying language change.