Research suggests that girls acquire language faster than boys, with gender differences most pronounced in vocabulary acquisition during early childhood. This study examines the role of gender in the acquisition of vocabulary and morphosyntax in Palestinian Arabic-speaking children aged 18 to 36 months. Using the Palestinian Arabic Communicative…

Purpose: This study presents a comprehensive exploration of lexical and grammatical development in Palestinian Arabic (PA). The study aims to test the validity of the Palestinian Arabic Communicative Development Inventory (PA-CDI) as well as generate growth curves for lexical and morphosyntactic development, examine the order of emergence of both…

There is a growing body of research from various perspectives in heritage language (henceforth HL) acquisition as an emerging field. Some studies proposed that HL acquisition is a differential acquisition compared with the baseline language (i.e., the language spoken by the parents or caregivers) (Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Dubiel &…

The traditional Philadelphia allophonic /ae/ system (henceforth: PHL shown in (1) below) is characterized by a set of complicated conditioning factors and a dramatic acoustic distinction between the two allophones. In recent years, some Philadelphians have begun to exhibit a new allophonic system (NAS, shown in (2) below). Like PHL, NAS is…

Article supported in part by a grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (VM)

This book examines children's acquisition of a first language, the stages they go through, and how they use language as they learn. There are 16 chapters in 4 parts. After chapter 1, "Acquiring Languages: Issues and Questions," Part 1, "Getting Started," offers (2) "In Conversation with Children," (3) "Starting…

A definition of bilingualism can include speakers of different languages as well as those who speak several dialects or several sub-varieties of dialects in the same language. Most speakers are able to practice code-switching, whether it is from language to language or dialect to dialect, and the processes involved in such a capability may be the…

The purpose of this series of four studies was to precisely describe the code and dialect features of the speech of both lower class Negro children and middle class white children. In the first study, 16 white middle class (WMC) children were compared to 16 Negro lower class (NLC) children on both an imitation and a comprehension task. The WMC…

The language a child learns from and attends to is the speech of significant persons in his world, addressed to each other and to him. As the child gradually participates in this social interaction he learns communicative competence, i.e., the nonconscious, tacit knowledge that underlies speech behavior--knowledge of both the language and the…

This book presents a discussion of various distinctive characteristics of English as spoken in Canada. The book begins with a discussion of general characteristics and a look at the origins of Canadian English. There is a discussion of Canadianisms, Americanisms, and Britishisms and a consideration of influencing languages--Indian and Eskimo,…

Concepts advanced by grammarians, linguistic historians, dialectologists, psycholinguists, lexicographers, semanticists, and phonologists, together with new approaches to reading, spelling, and literature, can help the teacher make the English program more stimulating for children. For instance, discoveries made by psycholinguists have attested to…

This collection of papers is divided into four sections. Section 1, "Historical Linguistics," includes "The Grammaticalization of Non-Dative Reflexes of Latin ill- in Spanish" (Jose R. Carrasquel) and "'Esto es Ligero de Fazer': Object to Subject Raising in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish" (Mark Davies). Section 2, "Language Acquisition and…

A SEPARATE LANGUAGE MANUAL FOR THE NEBRASKA ELEMENTARY ENGLISH CURRICULUM SUPPLEMENTS THE LANGUAGE-EXPLORATION SECTIONS OF THE UNITS IN GRADES ONE THROUGH SIX. THIS RESOURCE MANUAL PROVIDES AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN LANGUAGE STUDY AND DESCRIBES ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE LEARNING LEVELS OF CHILDREN. BY THE TIME CHILDREN ENTER JUNIOR HIGH…