This article provides a conceptual review of the principles of input spacing as they might relate specifically to oral task repetition research and presents some of the common methodological considerations from the broader input spacing literature. The specific considerations discussed include the interaction between intersession intervals and…

"Wh"-words have been analysed as existential quantifiers (Chierchia in Logic in grammar: polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Fox, in Sauerland U, Stateva P (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Palgrave…

Cross-situational word learning, the ability to decipher word-referent links over multiple ambiguous learning events, has been documented across development and proposed to be key to vocabulary acquisition. However, this work has largely focused on learning from one-to-one structure, where each referent is consistently linked with a single label.…

Many studies suggest that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Although statistical learning is not necessarily implicit in nature, it is often defined as learning that happens without awareness. This article investigates whether statistical learning in young children is indeed implicit,…

Human languages, signed and spoken, can be characterized by the structural patterns they use to associate communicative "forms" with "meanings." One such pattern is paradigmatic morphology, where complex words are built from the systematic use "and re-use" of sub-lexical units. Here, we provide evidence of emergent…

Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from input (e.g., in language), is likely supported by learners' prior expectations about how component units co-occur. In this study, we investigated how adults' prior experience with sublexical regularities in their native language influences performance on an empirical language learning…

Purpose: Adults recognize words that are acquired during childhood more quickly than words acquired during adulthood. This is known as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. The AoA effect, according to the integrated account, manifests in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing and in tasks with arbitrary input-output mapping. Compound…

The ability to extract patterns from sensory input across time and space is thought to underlie the development and acquisition of language and literacy skills, particularly the subdomains marked by the learning of probabilistic knowledge. Thus, impairments in procedural learning are hypothesized to underlie neurodevelopmental disorders, such as…

Aspectual and mood morphology are vulnerable domains in adult heritage speakers. This paper investigates the root of such vulnerability within the domain of Turkish evidentiality system by comparing 20 second-generation adult and 20 school-age child Turkish heritage speakers to 20 first-generation immigrants (main input providers for child…

Research shows that meaning-focused reading offers opportunities for incidental grammar acquisition. However, the number of such studies remains limited and none have examined the role of both in-text encounters with grammar structures and reading comprehension in this learning. The present study filled these gaps. Employing a between-group,…

How do children learn the meaning of words like "pretty" and "tall," which are not only gradable and context dependent (Kennedy & McNally 2005), but encode speaker subjectivity? Despite their complex semantics (Stephenson 2007; Lasersohn 2009; Bylinina 2014), these and other adjectives like them, are some of the most…

The present study examines the mechanisms of lexical case acquisition in Russian by two-to-five-year-old Russian monolingual (n = 54) and Russian-English bilingual children (n = 38). Participants performed a picture-based sentence completion task. Sentences were constructed to elicit production of real Russian words (n = 24) and nonce words (n =…

Continuation Task, which closely links language inputs and outputs, is considered to be an effective method in foreign language learning. This paper is an empirical research that investigates the effects of interaction and alignment of Continuation Task in Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) writing. The participants are a total of 30 Cambodian…

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…

Sound symbolism, the iconic link between speech sounds and meanings, helps children's verb learning. In sound symbolically rich languages such as Turkish, hearing sound symbolic words might facilitate early verb learning and later language-specific expressions of motion events, by providing an easier way to map verbs onto events. These links could…