Grammar competition has been proposed as a model for second language (L2) acquisition. Variational Learning provides a framework within which to investigate the idea of grammar competition as the model requires a marriage of quantitative properties of the input with Universal Grammar. A diachronic variational model of grammar competition is…

While previous sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that children faithfully acquire probabilistic input constrained by sociolinguistic and linguistic factors (e.g., gender and socioeconomic status), research suggests children regularize inconsistent input-probabilistic input that is not sociolinguistically constrained (e.g., Hudson Kam &…

The study aims at identifying characteristic phenotypes for children with SLI and children with sensorineural hearing impairment (HI) in language and in domains associated with language. We focus on verbal agreement inflection and phonological short-term memory, phenomena that have been repeatedly found to be impaired in both groups of children. A…