Factors which impact bilingual language development can often interact with different language features. The current study teases apart the impact of internal and external factors (chronological age, length of exposure, L2 richness, L2 use at home, maternal education and maternal L2 proficiency) across linguistic domains and features (vocabulary,…

Codeswitching is a common feature of bilingual language practices, yet its impact on word learning is poorly understood. Critically, processing costs associated with codeswitching may extend to learning. Moreover, verbs tend to be more difficult to learn than nouns, and the challenges of learning verbs could compound with processing costs…

The acquisition of negation is a key milestone in early language development that enables children to express rejection, non-existence, and deny propositions. In this study, we ask whether the development of the functions of negation follows a universal trajectory or varies based on language-specific features and environmental input. We…

This study examined the influence of cognate status and language distance on simultaneous bilingual children's vocabulary acquisition. It aimed to tease apart effects of word-level similarities and language-level similarities, while also exploring the role of individual-level variation in age, exposure, and nontarget language proficiency. Children…

Background: This study explores how family language policies (FLPs) in multilingual homes where isiXhosa is the primary language influence caregiver choices regarding children's language development and education. Objectives: The study aims to give insight on how non-nuclear family structures in a selected sample of Western Cape families are…

Metaphors are key to how children conceptualise the world around them and how they engage socially and educationally. This study investigated metaphor comprehension in typically developing Arabic-speaking children aged 3;01-6;07. Eighty-seven children were administered a newly developed task containing 20 narrated stories and were asked to point…

Purpose: This study investigates the acquisition of aspect markers by Mandarin-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in comparison to typically developing aged-matched (TDA) children and typically developing younger (TDY) children through the aspect hypothesis (AH). Method: A sentence-picture matching task and a priming…

Background and Aims: The aim of the current study is to assess the validity of the Cross-linguistic lexical task (CLT) against direct and indirect measures of lexical skills across 2-6 years of age, for a crucial period of lexical development. In addition to evaluating relationships between measures at the level of total score, we also explored…

Numerous studies indicate that the language and literacy development of young children is highly contingent upon the construction of an enriching home literacy environment. Using sociocultural theory as a framework, in this article I explore how a bilingual child's language and literacy acquisition is embedded as a social practice within the home…

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…

German-speaking children between ages 2 and 3 mostly use the preposition ohne ('without') in an adult-like way, to express the absence of something. In this article we present surprising results from a corpus study suggesting that in this age group, absence can also be expressed using the sequence mit ohne 'with without'. We argue that this…

Purpose: The Arabic verb system features a nonlinear root and pattern derivational morphology. Previous studies suggest that young Arabic and Hebrew speakers' early verb use is based on semantic complexity rather than derivational morphological structure. The present study examines the role of morphological and semantic complexity in the emergence…

Purpose: Parents of autistic children are often advised to use only one language to simplify their child's language acquisition. Often this recommendation orients towards the geographically predominant language, which may cause difficulties especially for minority-language families. On the other hand, scientific evidence suggests that…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, public life in many countries ground to a halt in early 2020. The aims of this study were (i) to uncover the language practices of multilingual families during the pandemic, in general and especially regarding homeschooling; and (ii) to determine to what extent the changes in circumstance caused by the…

This study investigated phonological whole-word measures in bilingual Arabic-English speakers to explore how the target approximations influence children's phonological development. To this end, fifteen bilingual Arabic-English speakers and nine monolingual Arabic-speaking children aged 36-48 months (mean = 42) participated in a parent-child…