Young children can exploit the syntactic context of a novel word to narrow down its probable meaning. This is "syntactic bootstrapping." A learner that uses syntactic bootstrapping to foster lexical acquisition must first have identified the semantic information that a syntactic context provides. Based on the "semantic seed…

Why do infants learn some words earlier than others? Many theories of early word learning focus on explaining how infants map labels onto concrete objects. However, words that are more abstract than object nouns, such as "uh-oh," "hi," "more," "up," and "all-gone," are typically among the first to…

Language is subject to a variety of pressures. Recent work has documented that many aspects of language structure have properties that appear to be shaped by biases for the efficient communication of semantic meaning. Other work has investigated the role of social pressures, whereby linguistic variants can acquire positive or negative evaluation…

Successful language learning in bilinguals requires the differentiation of two language systems. The capacity to discriminate rhythmically close languages has been reported in 4-month-olds using auditory-only stimuli. This research offers a novel perspective on early language discrimination using audiovisual material. Monolingual and bilingual…

Evidence suggests that the quantity of linguistic input experienced by infants in early childhood centres relates to the quality of educator-infant interactions. However, little is known about the linguistic properties of mutually responsive educator-infant interactions. This study uses sequence analyses to identify patterns of educator-infant…

Infants learn nouns during object-naming events--moments when caregivers name the object of infants' play (e.g., ball as infant holds a ball). Do caregivers also label the actions of infants' play (e.g., roll as infant rolls a ball)? We investigated connections between mothers' verb inputs and infants' actions. We video-recorded 32 infant-mother…

Infants are born highly sensitive to the natural patterns found in languages. They use their perceptual sensitivity to acquire detailed information about the structure of languages in their environment. To date, most studies of infant perception and early language acquisition have investigated spoken/auditory languages and hearing infants (e.g.…

Measurements of infants' quotidian experiences provide critical information about early development. However, the role of sampling methods in providing these measurements is rarely examined. Here we directly compare language input from hour-long video-recordings and daylong audio-recordings within the same group of 44 infants at 6 and 7 months. We…

Adjectives are essential for describing and differentiating concepts. However, they have a protracted development relative to other word classes. Here we measure three- and four-year-olds' exposure to adjectives across a range of interactive and socioeconomic contexts to: (i) measure the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic variability of adjectives…

Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their…

Languages differ in how they encode causal events, placing greater or lesser emphasis on the agent or patient of the action. Little is known about how these preferences emerge and the relative influence of cognitive biases and language-specific input at different stages in development. In these studies, we investigated the emergence of sentence…

This article provides a microscopic view of learners' first encounters with multimodal texts in their primary EFL classrooms. It is argued that multimodal texts create opportunities for language development in the primary EFL classroom: they offer different access points for comprehension, invite participation, and motivate repeated practice so…

Recent research suggests that caregiver-child extratextual talk during shared book reading facilitates the development of preschool children's oral language skills. This study investigated the effects of the amount of picturebook text on mother-child extratextual talk during shared book reading. Twenty-four mother-child dyads (children aged…

This study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of event semantics in interpreting spatial modifiers with "zai" 'at' after a posture verb or before a placement verb. The event-semantic principles investigated include subevent modification (Parsons, 1990) and aspect shift (Fong, 1997). We conducted an experimental study…

Although research suggests that responsive interactions are imperative for language development, the advent of mobile technology means that parent-child exchanges are often fraught with unpredictable interruptions. Less clear is how these momentary breaks in responsiveness affect word learning. In this within-subjects design, 38 mothers taught…