We use a novel paradigm to examine the effect of language exposure and variable input on the acquisition of words in primary school--aged children. Children growing up with different languages and foreign or regional accents in their input might benefit from their experience with variability when learning new words from peers with unfamiliar…

Heritage Spanish is often influenced by English, and previous research on late Spanish-English bilinguals suggests that their relative clause attachment preferences in Spanish are affected by English exposure. Nevertheless, recent work with heritage speakers has revealed that early (high-proficiency) Spanish-English bilinguals demonstrate a…

We present the case study of MB--a bilingual child with Down syndrome (DS) who speaks Russian (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]) and has learned to read in two different alphabets with different symbol systems. We demonstrate that, in terms of oral language, MB is as proficient in Russian as English, with a mild advantage for…

This study examines whether adult second language (L2) learners of an ungendered first language (L1) are sensitive to gender congruency (grammatical feature absent in the L1) and noun animacy (semantic feature present in the L1) when processing L2 gender concord and whether L2 proficiency level determines such sensitivity. To address these…

Metalinguistic skills may develop differently in multilingual and monolingual children. This study investigated effects of immersion in Cherokee as a second language on young children's (4;5-6;1) skills of noticing morphological forms/patterns in English, their first language, by comparing English past tense skills on two nonword and two real-word…