Verbal Fluency (VF) task total scores are widely used in language attrition studies, but they do not provide insight into the processes underlying optimal performance. We analyse the efficacy of clustering (subcategories within a category) and switching (shifting between these subcategories) strategies in phonemic (PVF) and semantic (SVF) tasks.…

The current study examines the bilingual language development of twelve young children. We focus on the use of Spanish as a heritage language among the children while they learn English in an English-majority environment. Data was collected in English and Spanish four times over the first two years of formal schooling. The study focuses on oral…

The field of Heritage Language has experienced a great deal of advancement in the past few decades. Much research effort has been dedicated to analyzing and understanding different aspects of heritage language speakers, but less work has been done in the topic of pedagogical approaches. The few recent studies on pedagogical approaches have focused…

The Iban language of Sarawak is an indigenous language that has an orthography and has been taught as a subject in Malaysian schools since 1968. However, no findings are available on whether Iban is used for written and formal communication. This study examined the extent of the formal use of Iban among the Iban community. Questionnaire data from…

Malaysia is a multilingual and multiethnic country with a substantial population of ethnic Chinese, who use standardized languages such as Malay, English, and Mandarin, as well as various Chinese dialects in their daily lives within and beyond Chinese communities. Cantonese is a community language that significantly impacts the lives of local…

Divergent views on the relative value or status of spoken and written language skills may contribute to a disconnect between lay community members and language professionals, activists, or academics, and conflicted approaches to language support, teaching and/or revitalisation. Taking the bilingual Outer Hebrides as a case study, an online…

Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, the most disadvantaged of the minority groups, account for only about 2.4% of the total population. Within the Minnan dominant society of Taiwan, the Indigenous minority groups are confronted by critical language loss often attributed to cultural and structural assimilation factors. This study aims to investigate…

Families that live temporarily abroad for work or education (amongst other reasons) often encounter some difficulties to maintain their children's L1; particularly when they live in English-speaking countries. This study explores the language maintenance experiences of ten Saudi Arabian families sojourning in Australia, from the perspective of…

In this article, we study a simple mathematical model of a bilingual community in which all agents are fluent in the majority language but only a fraction of the population has some degree of proficiency in the minority language. We investigate how different distributions of proficiency, combined with the speakers' attitudes toward or against the…

This study focuses on the assessment of working memory and linguistic skills in 21 Italian-Russian speaking bilingual children who were born in Italy and inherited Russian from their parents. Their performance was compared to that of 21 monolingual Russian-speaking and 21 monolingual Italian-speaking peers. For the assessment of the two languages…

This study investigated the Family Language Policy of second- and third-generation Turkish parents in Melbourne, Australia. Earlier research has shown that the family home is a crucial site for language maintenance [Fishman 1991. "Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages."…

Negidal is a Northern Tungusic language closely related to Evenki with two recognized dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal. This nearly extinct language used to be spoken in the Lower Amur region of the Russian Far East by people whose traditional way of life was based on fishing and hunting. While the number of remaining active speakers of Upper…

As a country founded by immigrants, the United States (U.S.) has a long history of multilingualism. Multilingualism is associated with better linguistic awareness (Aronin & Singleton 2012; Bialystok, 2002), cognitive advantages (Aronin & Singleton 2012), and social benefits (Baker, 2001). The need for and value of multilingualism in an…

This longitudinal study examined the development of narrative micro- and macrostructure in Japanese-English bilingual returnee children. Returnees are children of immigrant families who move to a foreign country, spending a significant portion of their formative developmental years in the foreign majority language context before returning to their…

The Bailiwick of Guernsey is a small, semi-autonomous archipelago in the English Channel. Although it is a British Crown dependency and part of the British Isles, it has its own parliament and does not belong to the United Kingdom or the European Union. This unusual geopolitical situation means that the nation-state has little relevance. It is…