The field of Linguistics has long been interested in the verb meanings of intransitive verbs and their argument structure, specifically the breakdown of intransitive verbs into unaccusative and unergative verb types. Despite extensive research, a universally applicable explanation for this breakdown remains elusive due in part to the variability…

Paradis' (2023) keynote article is a timely documentation of the ongoing shift in focus within childhood bilingualism research from investigating the factors that modulate majority or second language (ML/L2) attainment (Chondrogianni & Marinis, 2011) to understanding the sources of variation that lead to minority heritage language (HL)…

This volume presents research on second language learning through audiovisual input, conducted within the SUBTiLL (Subtitles in Language Learning) project at the University of Barcelona. It includes studies exploring various language dimensions and skills, such as vocabulary, pronunciation, and reading, while also considering learner factors, such…

This paper discusses the role of mediation as it arose in developing and teaching two online American Sign Language (ASL) courses for parents of deaf children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaf children and their families who are still acquiring ASL have ongoing learning needs that are most often not met in mainstream educational systems, and…

Native speakers of English have a strong preference for transferred negation as opposed to non-transferred negation. The present study aims to examine whether young Chinese-speaking ESL learners have a target-like preference for transferred negation and whether they have a system-wide representation of transferred negation in their early English…

A great deal of research has focused on tasks, particularly for adult second language learners. In this paper we provide an account of studies that have investigated children and tasks -- an age group that have received far less attention. We consider, in particular, the impact of tasks on children's language learning, how their design features…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

The goal of this brief article is to highlight a specific methodological consideration pertaining to the examination of linguistic transfer in sequential language acquisition: When and how can transfer be meaningfully disentangled from issues pertaining to developmental trajectories of the target language? While this methodological issue is…

This paper investigated how production task combined with teacher feedback (in the form of recasts) affects child second language development, and the effects of task complexity on their production performance. 92 child learners of English in three intact classes were assigned to three tasks of different complexity (simple, +complex, ++complex).…

The present study explores the ways in which young EFL learners draw on lived experiences, viewed as interactional experiences in L1 or L2 which they have participated in or observed, to ground their metapragmatic understandings. Building on previous research with adult (e.g. McConachy 2018) and young learners (Savic 2021; Savic and Myrset 2021),…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate whether dual language experience affects procedural learning ability in typically developing children and in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: We examined procedural learning in monolingual and bilingual school-aged children (ages 8-12 years) with and without SLI. The…

Age is an essential factor in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), impacting the success of students and instructional methods. The purpose of this study is to examine the age factor in SLA by examining three age categories -- children, adolescents and adults. In doing so, the study considers the Critical Period Hypothesis as a base of linguistic…

Although children may productively use concrete nouns after limited exposure, complete mastery of adult-like patterns of noun usage can take up to 14 years. We evaluated whether a transition from universal to language-specific naming is part of the refinement in later lexical development, and we compared how this refinement plays out in…

Children are thought to learn second languages (L2s) using primarily implicit mechanisms, in contrast to adults, who primarily rely on explicit language learning. This difference is usually attributed to cognitive maturation, but adults also receive more explicit instruction than children, which may influence their learning strategies. This study…

We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ("give the book to library"/"give the library the book"), while excluding negative exceptions ("donate the…