Families' mealtime talk has significant implications for children's language development. This study investigated five middle-class Australian Chinese families that differ in their lifestyles and meal routines. It aims to explore: (1) the nature of the Chinese parents' language use in interactions with children at mealtime; and (2) the factors…

Phonotactics--constraints on the position and combination of speech sounds within syllables--are subject to statistical differences that gradiently affect speaker and listener behavior (e.g., Vitevitch & Luce, 1999). What statistical properties drive the acquisition of such constraints? Because they are naturally highly correlated, previous…

Lexical semantics is the field of cognitive science which attempts to explain how speakers learn to use and accept sentences like "She filled the glass with water" but avoid and reject sentences like "She poured the glass with water," often with poor or impoverished evidence. In order to explain why some verbs alternate in…

The traditional discussion of language issues is extended to multicultural settings by looking at how language shapes and is shaped by diverse cultural experiences. This review of existing studies shows that the acquisition of culture-specific communicative competence and socialization patterns plays a significant role in language acquisition and…