Research has shown that non-native background languages (L2s) can play an important role in the acquisition of an L3/L[subscript n]. However, only a few studies have focussed on positive transfer from an L2 to an L3/Ln in the context of multilingual language acquisition of Romance past tenses. The present study therefore analyses the acquisition…

This article offers a descriptive account of seven interjections, "eish", "yho", "tjo", "sho", "hayi", "hau", and "mxm", which are adopted from different local South African languages into South African English. It investigates the frequencies, orthography, syntactic position,…

Bilinguals employ both global and local control mechanisms to manage coactivated languages that compete for selection, yet little is known about how they operate on morphosyntactic information. The current study investigated bilingual language control mechanisms for a morphosyntactic production task. Across two experiments, 48 early…

We investigate the contact situation between Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL) in a bilingual deaf community in Israel. We examine one outcome of language contact, known as reiteration--when two semantically equivalent lexical items from two different languages are produced sequentially. Until now, reiteration has…

This article explores cross-linguistic lexical influence (CLI), i.e. idiosyncratic borrowings and creations based on other languages, in texts written by pupils learning French and English as foreign languages, and whose language of instruction is German. The study, carried out in German-speaking Switzerland, was based on a plurilingual conception…

Although cross-linguistic influence at the level of morphosyntax is one of the most intensively studied topics in child bilingualism, the circumstances under which it occurs remain unclear. In this meta-analysis, we measured the effect size of cross-linguistic influence and systematically assessed its predictors in 750 simultaneous and early…

This paper examines the understudied phenomenon of consonant gemination in the pronunciation of English among Levantine Arabic learners of English (LA learners). The very few studies that touched on gemination among LA learners attributed gemination to spelling in the target language (English). This study challenges this analysis and demonstrates…

This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both…

The era of globalization has led to frequent communication among people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, carried out usually in English, the modern lingua franca. English has influenced the languages of the world, which have started to borrow words in order to keep up with progress and internationalization. Anglicisms are used…

This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the…

This study examines utterances--either words, phrases, or sentences--that instructors initiate and students later appropriate for their own purposes and interests in different sequential contexts. We name these utterances "shared codes" because they occur repeatedly in classroom interactions and gradually take on meanings unique to class…

Speech-to-text applications have great potential for helping students with English language comprehension and pronunciation practice. This study explores the functionality of five speech-to-text (STT) applications (Google Docs voice typing tool, Apple Dictation, Windows 10 Dictation, Dictation.io [a website service], and "Transcribe" [an…

In the Afro-Colombian community of San Basilio de Palenque, there are school-based efforts to revitalize the once-endangered creole language Palenquero. At present, most Palenquero language classes do not include grammatical instruction, active student production, or corrective feedback, and there is little or no communication in Palenquero…

Lexical variation and change is prevalent in the short history of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and in the current context of globalized flows of communication we observe growing use of ASL-concordant variants that land in New Zealand via other signed languages, online deaf media, and international interaction. Results from a variant-pair…

In simultaneous interpreting studies, the concept of interference -- namely, the marks of the source language in the target language -- is perceived as a negative phenomenon. However, interference is likely to happen at a lexical level when the target language does not have its own lexicon. This is the case in international sign (IS), which can be…