We present one of the first detailed studies on hesitation marking in a sign language. Based on the analysis of a set of monologues and dialogues from the "Corpus NGT" (Crasborn and Zwitserlood 2008; Crasborn, Zwitserlood, and Ros 2008), we describe the form and position of manual and nonmanual markers of hesitation in Sign Language of…

Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the 'voiced' dorsal plosive /g/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch-German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6-6;0…

In English, a sentence like "The cat didn't eat the carrot or the pepper" typically receives a "neither" interpretation; in Japanese it receives a "not this or not that" interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the "neither" interpretation (strong reading)…

Previous research indicates that infant-directed speech (IDS) is usually slower than adult-directed speech (ADS) and mothers prefer placing a focused word in isolation or utterance-final position in (English) IDS, which may benefit word learning. This study investigated the speaking rate and word position of IDS in two typologically-distinct…

There is growing evidence that dyslexia may involve difficulty with implicit learning, which may hinder learners with dyslexia to acquire spelling skills in a foreign language through implicit instruction. Paradoxically, this is exactly how Dutch students with dyslexia learn English spelling at school. This research aims to determine if…

Despite the fact that many of the world's languages use lexical tone, the majority of language acquisition studies has focused on non-tone languages. Research on tone languages has typically investigated wellknown tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. The current study looked at a Limburgian dialect of Dutch that uses lexical…

This study investigates the pitch properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) specific to word-learning contexts in which mothers introduce unfamiliar words to children. Using a semi-spontaneous story-book telling task, we examined (1) whether mothers made distinctions between unfamiliar and familiar words with pitch in IDS compared to…

Production studies show connective acquisition by age 3;0, but comprehension studies show errors until 9;0 or older. To further investigate this gap, two comprehension tasks were carried out with 78 Dutch children between the ages of 7;0 and 10;1, testing contrastive "maar" 'but' and causal "want" 'because' connectives for…

The paper focuses on translanguaging practices of highly skilled refugees in a transition program in Dutch higher education. The pathways for refugees to enter higher education are full of obstacles. Acquiring the new language at a university level is one of the biggest challenges. Many institutions offer 'transition programs' to prepare refugees…

This study examines the acquisition process of speech rhythm in Dutch learners of Spanish (DLS) and Spanish learners of Dutch (SLD) at different proficiency levels to determine whether learning direction affects the success of rhythm acquisition in a foreign language (L2). Analyses of lengthening effects showed that the two learner groups followed…

The results of a self-paced reading study with advanced German, Dutch and French second language (L2) learners of English showed that their online comprehension of early closure (EC) sentences which are initially misanalysed by native English speakers (e.g. "While John hunted the frightened rabbit escaped") was affected by whether or…

Previous research has shown that people make systematically different decisions when faced with a moral dilemma in a native than in a foreign language [e.g. Costa, A., A. Foucart, S. Hayakawa, M. Aparici, J. Apesteguia, J. Heafner, and B. Keysar. 2014. "Your Morals Depend on Language." PLoS One 9 (4): e94842]. The aim of the current…

Morphological complexity (MC) is a relatively new construct in second language acquisition (SLA). After critically discussing existing approaches to calculating MC in first- and second-language acquisition research, this article presents a new operationalization of the construct, the Morphological Complexity Index (MCI). The MCI is applied in two…

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability (PP) and neighbourhood density (ND) on pseudoword learning in 17 Dutch-speaking typically developing children (mean age 7;2). They were familiarized with 16 one-syllable pseudowords varying in PP (high vs low) and ND (high vs low) via a storytelling procedure. The…

This longitudinal study investigated to what extent the acquisition of cognates among bilingual children depends on the degree of cross-language similarity and intensity of exposure to the tested language, and whether children's sensitivity to cognates with different degrees of cross-language similarity changes over time. For three consecutive…