I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…

This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive among adults, much less is known about how children acquire such variation. The literature thus far indicates that the pathway of development involves first producing only…

Children who speak with nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialects represent a growing population in the U.S. public school system. This article provides recommendations for how teacher educators can support novice teachers in addressing the needs of NMAE speakers with or at risk for learning disabilities. This article focuses on four core…

Language documentation efforts are most often concerned with the adult language and usually do not include the language used by and with children. Essential parts of the natural linguistic behaviour of communities thus remain undocumented, and a growing body of literature explores what language documentation, language maintenance, and language…

In this personal reflection, Sonia Nieto recounts the lessons she learned about language and literacy from learning to speak Spanish and then English; to reading and writing; and the impact of these lessons on her identity, teaching, research, and life; and, more broadly, on the fields of education and literacy.

Purpose: This paper aims to outline the misguided underpinnings of the "word gap" concept promoted by Hart and Risley (1995). This concept posits that a "30 million word gap" between children of poverty and those from affluent households accounts for widespread academic disparities. Based on this premise, there has been a…

Critical directions in applied linguistics can be understood in various ways. The term "critical" as it has been used in "critical applied linguistics," "critical discourse analysis," "critical literacy" and so forth, is now embedded as part of applied linguistic work, adding an overt focus on questions of power and inequality to discourse…

Language is a complex adaptive system: Speakers are agents who interact with each other, and their past and current interactions feed into speakers' future behavior in complex ways. In this article, we describe the social cognitive linguistic basis for this analysis of language and a mathematical model developed in collaboration between…

Learning new languages potentially gives people vital skills to build more successful relationships, and understanding the social influences at work today may help us to know which type of language education is most beneficial. This article explores three social influences--globalisation, localisation and glocalisation--from the perspective of…

Some key issues in the study of intonation in language varieties are presented and discussed with reference to recent research on the intonation of New Zealand English. The particular issues that are highlighted include the determination of the intonational phonological categories of a language variety, and the attribution of varietal differences…

The paper offers a model of language development, first and second, within a processing perspective. We first sketch a modular view of language, in which competence is embodied in the processing mechanisms. We then propose a novel approach to language acquisition (Acquisition by Processing Theory, or APT), in which development of the module occurs…

This document presents some of the issues involved in deciding on a national language for the Philippines. It is noted that the Philippines needs a national language which would be accepted by most of the forty-five million Filipinos. If the trend continues for the next five years and if the trend in the Philippines to shift Pilipino (the national…

Hebrew-speaking fourth and seventh graders from lower middle-class backgrounds were tested on gender markings of numerals in two situations involving monitored and unmonitored situations. Results indicated the disappearance of gender agreement in Modern Hebrew numerals and a re-analysis of numeral suffixes by speakers. (Author/JL)

Patterns of French acquisition, use, and proficiency among Ontario anglophones are examined, and their implications for changes in both French native language instruction and French second language instruction to support the maintenance and use of French are examined. (MSE)

While all languages use shape to classify unfamiliar objects, some languages as diverse as Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, Mohawk, and American Sign Language lexicalize these and other types of description as noun classifiers. Classification does not develop from a fixed set of features in the object, but is discourse-sensitive and invoked when it would…