The first stage of combinatorial speech is better described as variable than uniform. Talk of variants obscures two different aspects of language (knowledge and use) and two different aspects of language development -- acquisition of the grammar (competence) and deployment of the grammar in speaking and listening (performance). Null subjects and…

The congruency effect--that is, faster and more accurate processing of congruent multiword units, has been demonstrated in multiple studies. It is still unclear, however, what its underlying mechanism is, and how congruency may interact with other factors. Using an acceptability judgement task, this study examined the congruency effect in…

Literature on early language acquisition has observed that age of onset of acquisition (AoA) is relevant for certain grammatical phenomena. Simultaneous bilinguals receive regular and extensive exposure to two languages from birth (Müller, 2009), whereas sequential child learners get in extensive contact to L[subscript B] once the L[subscript A]…

This brief report presents the results of a re-analysis of data by Yi, Man, and Maie (2023), who investigated L1 and L2 intuitive knowledge of phrasal frequency and collocation strength in multiword sequences. We utilized an individual-differences approach and examined which participant variables (age of onset, length of residence, language use,…

Data from elicited language tasks can add to the literature on the development of the complex syntax structures of embedded complement clauses in typically developing children. In the current study, preschool-age children (n = 27) participated in two elicited language tasks focusing on three types of embedded complement clauses: infinitival…

Affirmative consent initiatives advocate that college students understand sexual consent and refusal. There has been an influx of research focused on students' definitions or understanding of consent; however, research examining students' definitions of sexual refusals is limited. Additionally, different terminology (e.g., non-consent vs. sexual…

Plant lexicons in Sundanese proverbs have symbolized the ethnic group's identity since they have existed in the Sundanese natural environment, and represented Sundanese worldview. The objectives of the research were to discover the plant lexicons in Sundanese proverbs, their use, and their representation of human beings in the Sundanese ethnic…

When telling a story, a speaker needs to refer to story characters using appropriate expressions, which requires a mental model of the discourse. We hypothesize that, compared to those of adults, children's discourse models are based more on factors that are less cognitively demanding, such as animacy, and as they grow older, discourse factors…

Perception verbs and mental verbs have significant overlap in their syntax and semantics; both reference mental representations when taking embedded clauses, as in "I see that Maria was here" and "I think that Maria was here." Some have suggested that perception is more accessible for young children than mental states, raising…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Purpose: Children's ability to adjust one's language according to discourse context is important for success in academic settings. This study examined whether second graders vary in linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse contexts, that is, when describing pictures in contextualized (describing the picture to an examiner while…

Using a lexical decision task, Wolter and Yamashita (2015) showed that collocations that exist only in L1 but not in L2 were not processed faster than collocations that only exist in L2 but not in L1 or a random combination of two words. This result seems to support the age/order of acquisition effects (Carroll & White, 1973) over Jiang's…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

Studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) indicate that the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the academic writing of second language learners improves the overall quality of these texts by contributing to their cohesion and comprehensibility (Saif Modhish 2012; Jalilifar 2008; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995). However, despite the…

This study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of event semantics in interpreting spatial modifiers with "zai" 'at' after a posture verb or before a placement verb. The event-semantic principles investigated include subevent modification (Parsons, 1990) and aspect shift (Fong, 1997). We conducted an experimental study…