Idiomatics--the scientific study of idiomatic language and figurative language--is a pervasive theme in global literature, yet its precise terminology often lacks clear definition. This article addresses this challenge directly by delving into the etymology, significance, and universality of idiomatics. It emphasizes the pivotal role of idiomatics…

In the field of educational psychology, self-regulation is part of a well-established research paradigm that has been extensively applied to learning contexts. However, despite proposals highlighting its benefits, some researchers claim that its cross-pollination into applied linguistics has been slow. In their recent "Applied…

This study was conducted in Maharashtra, India with children studying in a regional medium (Marathi) government school. In Marathi, the translation of the word 'about' is not very commonly used. The aim of the study was to see how the children used uncertain language about prediction while engaged in a statistical investigation and how children…

Indigenous language reclamation efforts are pushing academic ideas of what language is, in order to be accountable to Indigenous epistemologies. Simultaneously, as our Indigenous languages grow, we (academics) are pushed to grow beyond the boundaries of disciplines. Categories of "language" and "land" have been segregated by…

This study aimed to explore the linguistic factors that influence the development and diversification of World Englishes along with implications for language teaching, learning, and policy, and to examine the trends in research related to WEs. Using a systematic review process with MAXQDA 20.2.1, the findings indicate that research on World…

A particular status of the English language as the language of international communication and connections between the nearly related English and German languages resulted in the emergence of many interlingual borrowings in the Modern English and German language vocabularies. The paper aims to consider the functioning of borrowings (loanwords) in…

The construct of awareness plays a pivotal role in several big debates in the field of second language acquisition. It lies at the heart of discussions about the (im)possibility of learning without awareness, or conversely, whether some degree of awareness is a requirement for learning to take place. In this study, I propose a research agenda to…

Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of its parts and the way in which those parts are…

Loanwords in Japanese that share form and meaning with English words are referred to as "Japanese-English cognates" (e.g., [Japanese symbol omitted] "radio") and are of fundamental concern for researchers concerned with vocabulary learning and instruction. This concern is reflected in the growing body of research into…

Languages spoken in larger populations are relatively simple. A possible explanation for this is that languages with a greater number of speakers tend to also be those with higher proportions of non-native speakers, who may simplify language during learning. We assess this explanation for the negative correlation between population size and…

Usage-based approaches explore how we learn language from our experience of language. Related research thus involves the analysis of the usage from which learners learn and of learner usage as it develops. This program involves considerable data recording, transcription, and analysis, using a variety of corpus and computational techniques, many of…

Bilingual language control refers to how bilinguals are able to speak exclusively in one language without the unintended language intruding. Two prominent verbal theories of bilingual language control have been proposed by researchers: the inhibitory control model (ICM) and the lexical selection mechanism model (LSM). The ICM posits that…

There has been little research into 'language play', the manipulation of language for enjoyment, in children's narrative writing. The unprompted language play of 36 children was investigated in their writing of an imaginative story. The sample comprised three attainment sub-groups from a larger repeat-design quantitative study of writing…

Idealization plays a fundamental role in scientific inquiry. This article examines the case for maintaining the claim that the second language acquisition (SLA) of grammatical structures such as negation manifests identifiable stages of acquisition. It proposes that, while research has demonstrated the need for de-idealization, there is no need to…

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…