Using data from a longitudinal German large-scale study and structural equation modeling, this study investigated the effects of different dimensions of the early home learning environment (HLE) as well as the effect of language-related preschool quality at the age of 3 to 5 years on students' later school-relevant language proficiency (as…

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: Children's language abilities set the stage for their education, psychosocial development and life chances across the life course. Aims: To compare the efficacy of two preschool language interventions delivered with low dosages in early years settings (EYS): Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) and an Adapted Derbyshire Language…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe latent dual language profiles in a large sample of school-age Spanish-English bilingual children designated as English learners (ELs) by their school district. Method: Data for this study include 847 Spanish-speaking ELs from kindergarten to third grade. Spanish and English narrative…

This study aims to identify similarities in morphological, phonological, lexical, and syntactical aspects between Arabic and English child language. It seeks to understand how children develop grammar at different stages, adhering to the rules acquired at each stage. This research analyzes YouTube videos featuring Arabic and English-speaking…

We used the elicited production task to explore the production of short and long passives in 15 Mandarin-speaking preschool children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD; aged 4;2-5;11) in comparison with 15 Typically Developing Aged-matched (TDA) children (aged 4;3-5;8) and 15 Typically Developing Younger (TDY) children (aged 3;2-4;3). This…

If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies, 'I have a cough', the requesting child must make a 'relevance inference' to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive…

We examine the second language (L2) acquisition of variable Spanish word order by first language (L1) speakers of English via the acquisition of unaccusative and transitive predicates in various focus-related contexts. We employ two bimodal linguistic tasks: (1) acceptability judgment task (B-AJT) and (2) appropriateness preference task (B-APT).…

Children from language minority homes reach school age with variable dual language skills. Cluster analysis identified four bilingual profiles among 126 U.S.-born, 5-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. The profiles differed on two dimensions: language balance and total language knowledge. Balance varied primarily as a function of indicators of…

Children and young people from migrated families often learn host languages faster than their parents might do, and from very young ages they help their parents, families or community members by translating or interpreting, known as child language brokering (CLB). Language brokers need to mediate with different languages in different contexts and…